


growing black irises in the sunshine

by pools_of_venetianblue



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunk Cormoran Strike, F/M, Fix-It, Human Disaster Cormoran Strike, Hungover Cormoran Strike, Pining Cormoran Strike, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tired Robin Ellacott, Title from a Hozier Song
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:34:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 45,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23410261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pools_of_venetianblue/pseuds/pools_of_venetianblue
Summary: Robin Venetia Ellacott’s first soulmate marks appeared just hours after she was pulled, screaming, into the world: little red poppies and purple dog-violets growing on her skin as though drawn by an invisible brush. The living ink bloomed and twined on her chubby knees and on the palms of her tiny waving hands, just where an adventurous - or clumsy - young boy might find himself with scrapes and bruises in the course of an unseasonably sunny October afternoon.
Relationships: Charlotte Campbell Ross/Cormoran Strike, Matthew Cunliffe/Robin Ellacott, Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 523
Kudos: 324
Collections: The Cormoran Strike Fest of Firsts





	1. the language of flowers

**Author's Note:**

> With many, many thanks to Bethany for her amazing beta reading, and to Tess for her encouragement and advice!
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this very self-indulgent fic, I regret absolutely nothing.

_Fall, 1984_

Robin Venetia Ellacott’s first soulmate marks appeared just hours after she was pulled, screaming, into the world: little red poppies and purple dog-violets growing on her skin as though drawn by an invisible brush. The living ink bloomed and twined on her chubby knees and on the palms of her tiny waving hands, just where an adventurous - or clumsy - young boy might find himself with scrapes and bruises in the course of an unseasonably sunny October afternoon. The nurses on duty, who had already been enchanted by the newborn’s bright blonde hair and big blue eyes, were drawn by the marks to Linda Ellacott’s bedside like moths to a flame.

“That’s good luck, that is,” said the older nurse – Shirley, Linda noted from the nametag pinned to the woman’s ample bosom as she bent over the bed to examine Robin where she was cradled in Linda’s arms. “The early bloom, she’ll find her groom.”

“I thought it was ‘doom’?” The second, younger nurse said. Linda couldn’t recall this one’s name – the nurses seemed to multiply like weeds, flitting into and out of the room so often that Linda’s head had begun to spin. “Early to bloom, quick to her doom.”

“Don’t be silly, Rhonda,” Shirley said sharply, frowning across the bed. “The earlier the better. My cousin’s oldest had her first marks at a week old, and now she’s mate-married with her third on the way, and her only twenty-seven.”

Rhonda opened her mouth to argue, but Linda let the words wash over her without hearing a one. She was bone-tired, her eyelids heavy, but she could not take her eyes off Robin--her first, precious daughter. She lifted a hand to trace the delicate petals of one of the blood-red poppies staining the baby’s tiny, chubby palms. Robin’s fist closed reflexively around Linda’s finger, her grip surprisingly strong.

She was jerked out of her reverie by Shirley tugging the covers on her bed a little too sharply.

“- and since he must be older, it means he’ll be able to take care of her properly,” the nurse said firmly. Rhonda, whose arms were full of linens, didn’t respond, but rolled her eyes at Linda as she turned to leave. Linda pressed her lips together to keep herself from laughing; she had very little regard for the old wives’ tales surrounding soulmate marks. In her arms, Robin gurgled quietly, knowing nothing yet of the divinations and expectations and rules that came inevitably with the blooming of the wound-flowers.

“I can take her to the nursery,” Shirley said, reaching for Robin, but Linda waved her off. 

“I’d like to hold her for a bit.”

“Suit yourself,” Shirley said. “Bassinet’s over there if you get tired. Shall I go find out where your husband’s got to?” She bustled off, leaving silence behind her like a blessing, and Linda was free once more to contemplate the way the sunlight glinted off of Robin’s golden hair, so much like her own. Robin had not yet relinquished Linda’s finger, her grasp strong even as her eyes fluttered closed and she slid into sleep.

“You don’t need to worry about _him_ , lucky or not,” she whispered to her daughter, leaning over to breathe in the sweet, distinctive newborn-baby smell. “I’m the one who’s going to take care of you, love.”

_Spring, 1985_

Cormoran Blue Strike spent the first ten and a half years of his life uninterested in the mystery of the soulmate marks, and unconcerned about their absence on his own skin. He was, for the most part, far too occupied with the whims of his erratic mother and the upheavals that came with her itinerant lifestyle. On the day that his first wound-flower appeared - or at least the first to be noticed, for who could tell whether there existed flowers which had bloomed and faded unseen under the loving but erratic care of Leda Strike - Cormoran’s most pressing concern was his supper. It had been several long hours since a too-scanty lunch of cornflakes and milk; his stomach had been growling for most of them, but it was his half-sister Lucy’s whispered pleadings that had finally driven him to venture out in search of food.

His mother was sprawled on the concrete front steps of the apartment building in which they were currently living, soaking in the early evening’s dying rays of weak spring sunshine. It was not the worst place they had ever stayed under Leda’s care - they had hot water, and a written lease, and while there was only one bedroom, at least they did not have to share it with strangers. The building was shabby and run down, though, the halls full of strange smells and stranger noises, and Lucy shrank from some of the other residents, with their gaunt faces and greasy hair, their sunken and staring eyes. It was with a group of these that Leda sat, laughter and chatter interrupted only by a puff of the communal joint as it passed by, a sip from the paper-bagged bottle in her hand.

Cormoran had to call his mother’s name twice to get her to look up. When she saw him, her beautiful dark eyes widened, and the smile faltered on her laughing face.

“Mum, can I have-”

Before Cormoran could finish, though, Leda had interrupted him with a gasping, delighted shriek and jumped to her feet, her dropped bottle spilling unnoticed on the street as she reached for him with both hands.

“Oh, my darling, my beautiful boy,” she cried, hugging him to her fiercely. “I can’t believe it, look at you!”

She smelled of her familiar perfume, and even more strongly of cannabis fumes. Cormoran wrinkled his nose and tried to pull away. “Mum, what’re you-”

Leda let him go and stepped back, one slim hand fluttering to her mouth, the other pressed to her heart, and Cormoran was alarmed to see tears gathering in her eyes. The other residents crowded onto the stoop were staring at him now. He ignored them.

“What’s wrong?” He asked his mother, voice pitched low, stepping closer to her in an attempt to block out the curious gazes of the onlookers. “Are you okay?”

Leda gasped. “You haven’t seen it?” 

“Seen what?” he said, but she had already turned away.

“Does anyone have a mirror?” she demanded of the group. After some muttering and shaking of heads, one of the women who had been leaning against the balustrade, heavyset with straw-blonde hair, produced a compact and handed it to Leda, who crouched in front of him.

“Look,” she whispered delightedly, holding the compact open in front of him, and he did.

The little mirror was clouded with the remnants of makeup powder and dust from the woman’s handbag, but through the smears, Cormoran could see it: on his left temple, just where someone taking their first tentative steps might bang their head against a coffee table, a burst of bright blue cornflowers.

“Oh,” he muttered.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” Leda said worshipfully, reaching out to trace the flowers with her slim fingers. “I was worried they’d never come.”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Cormoran said. “Listen, Mum, can I have some money for the chippy?”

But Leda wasn’t listening. The other women on the stoop had crowded around, peering at his forehead, and she was chattering excitedly to the youngest of them while the straw-haired one was attempting unsuccessfully to take back the compact clutched in his mother’s hand. Cormoran sighed.

Late into the night, Leda talked animatedly with the women, whom she’d invited back to the flat. One of them, grey-haired and tattooed, claimed that she had a foolproof ritual for drawing soulmates together, which he had flatly refused to take part in, despite Leda’s pleading. As Lucy listened with wide eyes to their mother’s musings about soulmates, Cormoran fried a packet of expired sausages, begged from a neighbour, for their supper.


	2. everyone's in love and flowers pick themselves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Who Knows If The Moon's" by E. E. Cummings

_Spring, 1994_

By the age of nineteen, Cormoran had learned more than he ever cared to know about soulmates, and the wound-flowers, and the supposed wisdom of the universe. He had read, along with every other schoolchild in Britain, the books which outlined the observed patterns of the flowers, the significance of the differences in their appearance across global communities, the studies into the mechanism behind them that had never given a conclusive answer to how or why they bloomed on the skin of almost every member of the human race, or indeed to the true nature of the connection they signified.

He knew, thanks to his little sister’s parroting of the pieces in her magazines, that only about a quarter of people ever found their soulmate, and that, of that number, roughly half would marry them. He had heard, from the ladies in his Aunt Joan’s knitting group, the difference in divorce statistics between soulmates and non-mates, and the methods by which one might search for the source of their wound-flowers. 

The authors he had studied in his English classes had waxed poetic about the blooms, and the connection they drew between love and pain; his biology classes had spent entire units on the taxonomy of flowers. He had even, to fit in with the groups of boys in the various schools he’d attended, participated in the age-old youthful ritual of manfully cutting one’s palm with a stolen knife and then covertly observing the hands of the girls one fancied the next day.

In Cormoran’s opinion, though, after all the evidence was in, the soulmate marks were nothing but a nasty trick the universe played on the romantics and the gullible. His mother, he thought bitterly, had believed in the wound-flowers, utterly and whole-heartedly, and what had it gotten her? A life spent chasing possibilities - and men - up and down the length of Britain, dragging her children behind her. And then, when against all odds she had found the one whose flowers matched her wounds, how had that turned out? Her soulmate was arrogant, vicious and cruel, stinking and swaggering; and yet Leda had stuck by him. She stayed in that filthy squat, that horror of a marriage, refusing to leave despite the pleading of her brother, her daughter, and her son, because that was the path that the universe had chosen for her. 

Cormoran could not put his faith in any universe that would leave his mother, no matter her failings, with a man like Whittaker. He ignored the flowers when they bloomed on his skin, and deliberately turned his thoughts away from the girl - for he thought it must be a girl - to whom the wounds belonged.

Charlotte, however, was of a different disposition. Though she paid no attention to her own flowers - small blooms, infrequent, on accidentally cut fingers or stubbed toes, the evidence of a quiet and conventional existence - she was fixated on his. When they appeared, she subjected them to careful scrutiny: outlining their edges with her delicate porcelain hands, speculating endlessly on how they had been inflicted, on the unknown girl to whom they truly belonged.

“Have you seen these?” she whispered to him in the dark, running her finger along his hip as he lay on his stomach, dozing and sated.

“Mm,” he mumbled, enjoying her cool touch on his overheated skin, then, “What?”

“Violets,” she said, her hand spreading to cover his buttock, a pleasurable shiver running through him as he clenched at her touch. “Masses and masses of violets.”

“Not really in the habit of staring at my own arse,” he drawled into the pillow, and was rewarded for his wit by Charlotte’s laugh, and the brush of her bare breasts against his back as she moved to straddle him, leaning down to bite gently into his shoulder, moving across his neck, alternating between sharp nibbles and soothing kisses.

He could feel his arousal stirring and growing, pushing against the mattress, and bucked his hips up, gently, so that Charlotte bounced where she was seated. She laughed again, deep and throaty, and wriggled against him, then pushed herself upright as she declared, “I think she rides horses.” 

Strike groaned. “You ride horses,” he said, and could almost feel Charlotte’s smirk. 

“But I’m good at it. Looks like she spends more time on the ground than the horse.”

Strike growled, and threw himself over, twisting so that she landed beneath him, laughing and breathless as he crawled over her and pinned her hands under his.

“Stop it,” he said, grinding himself against her, and when she opened her mouth again he sealed it with his own.

And as he thrust into her melting heat and she wrapped her long legs tightly around him, as she dug her long nails into his back, a sharp and delicious pain that made him buck helplessly against her, she whispered to him, her breath hot in his ear.

“You’re mine, Bluey. _Mine_. You hear me?”

“Yes,” he panted, as she writhed beneath him, around him. “Yes.”

The universe could go fuck itself, he thought later, groggily, as he slipped into sleep with the scent of Shalimar on his skin. 

_Spring, 2000_

Robin sighed in frustration as she dabbed at her face with the makeup sponge, peering closely at herself in the dressing table mirror. The foundation was new, and quite expensive - an entire weekend’s worth of pay from the dress shop in Harrogate - and was supposed to be specially formulated to cover “those little inconvenient marks of love”, as the nauseating ad copy had promised. It did not appear to be working as advertised, however. Through the thick layer of makeup, she could still see the shadows of the blooms around her left eye and spreading from her bottom lip across her chin, not to mention the strange pattern of small red roses that looked like bite marks - _bite marks!_ \- on her cheek.

_Inconvenient_ was putting it mildly, in Robin’s opinion. _Bloody infuriating,_ more like.

Robin had, in the course of her sixteen years of life, at countless sleepovers and birthday parties, joined in the divination games that were meant to reveal the identity or location of one’s soulmate: tossing orange peels over her shoulder to read the names they spelled out, taking her turn at the ouija board, closing her eyes to stick pins in the ancient atlases pulled from library shelves. 

Her friends, when they spoke dreamily of the day they would finally meet their soulmates, weaved fantasies from the threads of a thousand different romances. Eyes met across a crowded room, sparks of recognition were conveniently confirmed, all followed quickly by marriage and happily ever after. Their soulmates, though differing in detail according to taste and current celebrity crush, were always handsome, always kind, and most importantly, always _theirs_.

Robin, when she tried to imagine meeting the man whose injuries showed up so frequently on her skin, could only ever dream of one thing. To finally, _finally_ satisfy the desperate, consuming curiosity that had plagued her for so long. To sit him down and demand that he answer one question.

What the _hell_ had he been doing to himself?

It had been happening for almost as long as she could remember, the constant presence of the flowers marring the pale skin of her face, new bursts of vivid colour blooming to replace ones that had barely begun to fade. They would stop, sometimes for weeks at a time - once, she had gone a blessed nine months without the appearance of a single wound-flower anywhere above the neck - but they always came back. 

When she was very young, she had caught the worried looks that her parents shared with each other, the whispered conversations, the phrase “a troubled home” that skated over a multitude of hidden terrors. In later years, she had lain awake at night trying to imagine what could possibly cause the stuttering stream of cuts and bruises. Was he some kind of criminal, she wondered, part of a gang who dealt daily in the currency of violence and fear? Sometimes she thought that he might be an athlete, a somewhat more appealing option; her brothers often had similar injuries after their rugby matches, although nowhere near as frequently. Occasionally, she let herself indulge in a thrilling idea that he might be some kind of police detective, though she couldn’t quite decide how he could possibly be so often hurt in that case. Though she tried to resign herself to the fact that she may never know, the mystery gnawed at her.

She had learned to laugh off the teasing of her brothers and classmates, become inured to the stares she attracted from strangers in the street who were shocked by the ostentatious blooms. Most of the time, she forgot how surprising the frequency and prominence of her marks were, how much she stood out - how abnormal she really was.

Well, yesterday had been a stark reminder of _that_. Her fingers trembled and her throat burned with humiliation when she thought of it - and she had been unable to think of anything else since it had happened.

Matthew Cunliffe, the handsomest boy in her year - frankly, the most handsome boy she had ever seen in person - had sought her out. Matthew, with his perfect tawny hair, and his perfect chiseled jaw, and his perfect, clear skin that had never in her presence shown even a hint of a soulmate-mark, had strolled deliberately over to her table at lunch. He had squeezed in next to her, his knee touching hers under the table. He had chatted her up and smiled at her when she laughed at his jokes. 

Robin had felt clumsy and stupid next to him, and thought that she must have been blushing, but he had seemed not to mind. And then, in the middle of a sentence, his face had changed, and her stomach had dropped. His eyes had widened, his smile wiped away as though he’d been struck, and she just managed to catch the curl of his upper lip in confusion ( _or was it disgust?)_ before he turned pointedly to address the girl on his other side. She had made her excuses and fled to the toilets, knowing already what she would see when she got there. And sure enough, there they were in the bathroom mirror, stark under the harsh fluorescent lights as they bloomed across her face: blood red roses and scarlet pimpernels, and tiny blue forget-me-nots - as if she ever _could_ forget!

A swell of humiliation and fury had overwhelmed the small, familiar pang of worry she felt for her soulmate at the sight of the wound-flowers. Never before had she been so mortified at their appearance, so angry at _him_ , wherever he was, for inflicting them on her. She had hidden in the toilet until the next period, kept her head down in her remaining classes, and fled to the safety of home as soon as she possibly could, to cry into her mother’s comforting arms.

She could do nothing about her soulmate, she mused, brushing some powder onto her chin and tilting her head to consider its effect. He might be reckless, daring, foolhardy, or some combination of all three. He was certainly somewhere well beyond her reach, living his life with complete disregard for her feelings or convenience. But there was one thing that she could do, that she would do.

(She paused to consider her reflection. The makeup didn’t conceal the marks perfectly - there was still a slight unevenness of colour, a pattern of shadow and light that hinted at the shapes hidden beneath - but it would do for now.)

She could make damn sure that she was never, ever caught out like that again.


	3. the soul of the rose went into my blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from “Come into the Garden, Maud” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
> 
> TW: References to rape and strangulation.

_Winter, 2004_

Strike shouldered his way into the Gents, his ears ringing a little in the relative quiet as the roar of the crowded bar was cut off by the door swinging closed behind him. The room was cramped and grimy, the harsh fluorescents in the ceiling casting an unforgiving light on the accumulated stains of decades on the tiled floors. He fumbled a bit with his zipper, the three pints he’d downed pressing heavily on his bladder and making his movements slightly clumsier than usual.

Three down, and he was planning on several more. There was tomorrow’s early morning meeting with his lieutenant to consider, but fuck it - this was a celebration. A heroin dealer facing court martial, the reputation and integrity of the British Army upheld, and a very good-looking blonde corporal just transferred in from Brunei, whom Strike thought he might have a better than good chance with, judging from the volume of her laughter at his jokes and the way she’d looked at him over her beer.

The wall above the urinals was thick with graffiti, and Strike amused himself by attempting to translate the scrawled messages with the limited German he’d picked up in the three months that he’d been stationed here. He was still puzzling over schniedelwutz (was it something to do with a pig?) when, bladder empty and significantly more comfortable, he looked down to tuck himself back into his trousers - and his hands stilled.

“The fuck?” he muttered into his chest, tucking his chin down to get a better view of the flash of colour that had drawn his eye.

Barely visible under a mat of thick, curly black hair were flashes of bright violet, curling up from his groin onto the toned muscles of his abdomen. His flies forgotten and hanging open, he stepped back a bit and angled himself away from the urinal, the extra light allowing him to see more clearly the flowers snaking across his skin. 

He squinted, peering closely down at himself as he attempted to trace their shapes. He could make out an unfamiliar blossom, bright purple with long and pointed petals, star-like and somehow menacing. He cast his usually prodigious memory back, sifting through long ago botany lessons. Nightshade? And the velvety black flowers tangled into them, softer with their broad and overlapping petals… hellebore, he thought they might be. He had never seen either appear on his skin before, or anyone else’s for that matter, and certainly never in such an odd location. He stared for a moment more, uncomprehending, and then understanding slammed into him, his stomach lurching and acid rising in his throat. _Fuck._

A loud bang as the door behind him slammed into the tiled wall made Strike start, and he hurried to tuck in his shirt and zip his fly with shaking fingers as the burly man who had just entered lurched his way over to the line of urinals. He moved automatically to the sink to wash his hands, barely feeling the scald of the too-hot water on his skin. The tangle of flowers, their contrasting colours somehow noxious and malignant, slicked across his mind’s eye as he glanced up at his reflection in the grubby mirror. 

At the sight of his face, he sucked in a sharp breath and gripped the edge of the sink so tightly his knuckles turned white. He fought back nausea as he watched them bloom: delicate harebells and cornflowers and tiny white bunches of meadowsweet, around his left eye, down his cheek, across his mouth. Clusters of foxglove, rising above his collar in a thick band around his throat, bunched so tightly together that they formed one seamless, vivid mass of colour.

 _She rode horses_ , he thought dumbly to himself, a memory bubbling up from somewhere deep down, from beneath the beer and the shock and the nausea. _She rode horses, and she was always falling off._

He knew next to nothing about her. He had always preferred it that way, deliberately turned his thoughts away from the occasional spark of curiosity, averted his eyes from the infrequent marks that coloured his skin, the signs of a life being lived in distant parallel to his own.

Next to nothing, but that she was somewhere unknowable, unreachable, and that as he stood numb and staring in a dirty lavatory in Germany, she was - in danger, and in pain, and afraid, and he was the only one who knew and he could do fuck all but watch as the evidence of it stained his skin. 

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, dread and guilt like a stone in his stomach, afraid to look away from the mirror, afraid to blink, in case he missed any fresh marks; or worse, in case he looked back and the patchwork of flowers had disappeared, been wiped clean and replaced by a single tiny blossom hidden under his thick chest of hair, death-white and eternal.

“Oggy! Did you fall in, or - Jesus.” 

Cormoran jerked his head around. His partner Hardacre had appeared beside him unnoticed, and was staring at Strike’s face, his mouth gaping. In the quiet of the lavatory, through the muffled noises of the barroom outside, Strike could hear the steady drip of water onto porcelain from the tap in front of him.

He cleared his throat.

“Hardy,” he said, his voice steady and calm, betraying nothing. “Think I’m going to duck out early.”

“You sure?” Hardacre said, but it was more for form than anything, as he immediately moved aside so Strike could get to the door.

“Yeah. Make my excuses, will you? Tell them I’ve had a bad chicken wing or something.”

“Sure,” Hardacre said, and then, just as Strike reached the door, “you gonna be alright, Oggy?”

“Fine,” Strike said, and he knew that he wasn’t, and moreover knew that Hardacre did as well.

“I think there’s a back door, past the kitchen there,” Hardacre said, and Strike nodded his appreciation without looking back as the toilet door banged behind him.

There was indeed a back door, exiting onto a narrow alleyway lined with bins. The cold night air hit him like a slap to the face. He had forgotten his jacket in the bar; it didn’t matter. Hardy would retrieve it for him. He couldn’t face another of those stuttering moments, shock giving way to concern and then to feigned unseeing and stilted conversation. It felt wrong, somehow; as though to allow anyone else to see the evidence of what had happened, and then to politely look away and pretend they hadn’t, would be a disloyalty. A kind of violation. _Another kind of violation_ , Strike corrected himself grimly.

When he reached the barracks, it was with numb fingers and chattering teeth and a beeline for the bottle that he had stashed in a drawer for special occasions. It took three full fingers poured and thrown back straightaway, the cheap whiskey burning its way down his throat, before he could bring himself to look in the small mirror hanging on the inside of the wardrobe door.

The blossoms were still there, sharp and vivid against the cold-reddened skin of his face; he squinted at himself, scrutinizing every visible inch, but could see no marks that he hadn’t already catalogued in the lavatory mirror. He stripped off his shirt, twisted and turned so that he could see his torso and back. There were cornflowers smattered over his wrists and arms, that sickening tendril of poison hidden almost entirely under his trousers, but that was all. There were no other marks, nothing that could prove fatal - excepting, of course, that lurid streak of colour across his throat.

He sat heavily down on the bed and poured himself another whiskey, which he sipped slowly as his thoughts raced. Almost a thirty minute walk from the bar to the barracks, call it thirty-five minutes since he had first seen the wound-flowers, and she was still alive, at least. No new injuries since, which was no proof that there wouldn’t be. If she had been taken somewhere, if she was being held against her will - it was pointless to speculate, Strike knew. She would survive, or she wouldn’t, and either way there was nothing that he could do about it.

But he couldn’t seem to reign in his wayward mind, which picked over possibilities, probabilities, as meticulous as though the wound-flowers were a fresh case to be investigated. Was it someone she knew? Likely. A friend, a date, a relative. A stranger? Witnesses - could anyone see, hear? Could she find help, seek medical attention, or was she lying, unconscious and unseen, slowly freezing in some ditch or dark alley?

Another gulp of whiskey, and it slid easier down his throat this time as he tried to wash away the images that his imagination was pressing upon him. 

_I never wanted this,_ he thought darkly as he topped up his glass and leaned back against the headboard, blinking to clear the blur from his eyes and bring the ceiling back into focus. He had never wanted another person’s fate bound to his own, never wanted the burden and misery of bearing witness, of carrying another person’s pain.

Well, it was his now, and nothing could be done about it but to watch, and to wait.

\--

When Sergeant Strike met promptly with his lieutenant the next morning, it was with a high collar buttoned to the top, and dark shadows under his heavy eyes to set off the pale blues and whites of the wound-flowers, neither of which would fade for some weeks to come.


	4. a garden of stones, a garden of swords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief note: Our beloved cat Frodo passed away today. I'm a bit of a wreck, so I may be lax about responding to comments, but I do appreciate every one. I may also have to slow down the update schedule a bit, perhaps to one chapter a day depending on how I'm doing. Thank you all for your wonderful response to this fic, it has been a bright spot in a very bad day.
> 
> Chapter title from "And I Darken", by Kiersten White

_Spring, 2007_

Robin leaned back on her hands, enjoying the warmth of the spring sunshine on her face. She could hear her mother’s humming from the other side of the garden, where Linda was happily turning compost into the soil of her vegetable beds, and could feel Rowntree snuffling in his sleep, his head heavy on her lap. She lifted one hand to bury in his thick fur, scratching him gently, and smiled.

The day stretched ahead of her, pleasantly empty. She would do some laundry, she supposed, and help Linda prepare supper, and she thought idly that she might call Matthew in the evening. They had not seen each other in person since she’d visited him in March, and latterly he had been so busy with his course that they had barely even had time to speak on the phone. She missed him, desperately; but it was only a matter of weeks now, and he would be home to Masham for three glorious months. Robin contemplated with deep satisfaction the plans that they had made, and the prospect of seeing his handsome face nearly every day.

Rowntree growled a little in his sleep, and Robin stroked him with a soothing hand until he settled. She sighed, and laid back herself, pillowing her head in the fragrant grass, content and peaceful. 

It was a feeling too-long absent, and too hard-won, not to be cherished now.

Lulled by the warmth and fragrance of the garden, the distant hum of the village market and the closer buzzing of an unseen bee, Robin slipped slowly into a doze.

A cry of dismay, sudden and quickly cut off, jolted Robin awake. Rowntree started up, and was already barking as he lurched to his feet. Robin shot upright, her eyes flying open to see her mother standing over her, eyes wide over the filthy gardening gloves clamped to her mouth.

“What is it?” Robin said, her scattered thoughts still fuzzy. “Did something sting you?”

Linda didn’t answer, perhaps hadn’t even heard. She dropped her hands away from her face, which was stark white. “Oh, Robin,” she whispered, and Robin, her heart racing, followed her mother’s eyes down.

Her skin, so much of it bared by her light cotton sundress, was a riot of colour. Sweet violets and dog roses twined over her arms, bright red poppies bloomed above the neckline of her dress, garish yellow and scarlet pansies crawled over her hands and fingers, too bright against the pale pink of her nail polish.

Worse than that, worse than anything, was her right leg. From her knee to her toes, it was covered so thickly with the wound-flowers that she couldn’t see any skin, a sickening rainbow of colour that blended and blurred together until she couldn’t recognize any individual blooms, just a single writhing mass that made her stomach turn and her eyes water.

Linda was saying something, but the pounding in Robin’s ears drowned it out. The air felt thick in her lungs, like she was trying to breathe taffy, and she couldn’t seem to grasp on to a single one of her scattered, incoherent thoughts. _Her leg_.

Her mother had crouched down, reached out to touch Robin’s knee, and Robin jerked away, scrambling to her feet. She turned and ran, stumbling through the back door and up the stairs to her bedroom, where she slammed the door behind her and leaned against it, Destiny’s Child looking down at her from the wall opposite. She closed her eyes, focused on her breathing, tried to calm her racing thoughts; a minute, two, and she could step away from the door, towards the full length mirror that rested against the wall beside her dressing table.

Her fingers were trembling, and she struggled to get hold of the zipper on the back of her dress; but eventually she managed it and tugged it down, the cotton pooling on the floor around her feet so that she stood in front of the mirror in nothing but bra and knickers. 

The sight in front of her made Robin dizzy, and her eyes fluttered closed as she swallowed down the nausea swelling up her throat. She braced herself, took a deep, steadying breath, and forced them open again.

She hadn’t done her makeup today, in anticipation of a peaceful morning at home, so she could see that her face had not been spared; there were clusters of small pink roses dotting her cheeks, her forehead, her chin. Neither had her chest or stomach, the thick patches of bluebells sprouting across them a vivid contrast to the bright white cotton of her bra. 

Her first coherent thought, flitting guiltily past: _Matthew is going to hate this_. She was furious with herself for even thinking it, but it was true; though he had never said it outright, she had always known that Matthew loathed the sight of the wound-flowers on her skin.

She backed away from the mirror and sat down on her bed, pushing thoughts of Matthew firmly away, but just as inappropriate was the bubble of perennial curiosity rising from the pit of horror and sympathy in her stomach. _What had done this to him_ ? Robin struggled to imagine how someone could be hurt so much, so quickly. Was it some kind of horrible accident, an explosion or a car crash? Or had someone attacked him, deliberately injured him? Did he fight back, she wondered. Was the person who had done this to him suffering just as badly as he surely was? With a jolt, staring at that tangled growth of flowers on her leg, she thought: _He might die_.

He might die, her soulmate, and she would never know who he was, or what had really happened to him. Or perhaps there would be a report on the news, for such a violent death would surely be news, and she would look up to see his face for the first and last time, a small and grainy still photo flashed across the television screen while the barest facts of his life and death scrolled below it. These could be the last wound-flowers that she would ever see blossom across her skin.

Her thoughts flitted again to Matthew, to the single white snowdrop over his heart, the only bloom that ever had or ever would blight his perfect skin. She had felt desperately sorry for him, the first time she had seen it. Though her soulmate and his injury-prone face might irritate or frustrate her, though he had complicated her life in a multitude of little ways, he had always been _there_. A constant presence written across her skin, a possibility hovering over the edges of her life. 

In those long, miserable months that she had spent alone in this room, her thoughts had often been drawn to him. She had wondered whether he’d seen what happened to her that night, had tried to imagine the shape the wound-flowers would have taken on his skin. Had he understood what he was seeing, had he grasped the full meaning, the extent of the pain written in the patterns of colour and shape? It gave her a small kind of comfort, sometimes, to think that he did, that he had felt something for her in those moments - fear, anger, sympathy. The thought that he was somewhere out there going about his life, perhaps occasionally thinking of her, had been one of the few thin and frayed threads tethering her to the world, after.

To think that she could, in a matter of minutes, lose that - to think that she might, moments from now, be branded with a tiny white snowdrop of her own, to become with Matthew a matching set of unmatched souls -

 _Matthew would like that_ , was her first thought, guilty again.

Her second, fast on its heels, desperate and pleading: _No. Please, no. He can’t-_

\--

Hours later, as dusk drew on and the bright spring sunshine streaming through her window had deepened to syrupy gold, Robin had barely moved. She sat motionless on top of her duvet, her back propped against her pillows, staring fixedly down at her legs, stretched out on the bed in front of her.

A soft knock at the door; her mother, letting her know that tea was on the table.

“You can come in, if you want,” Robin said, her voice flat and her eyes dry.

A pause, and Linda opened the door, slipping into the room and closing it behind her. She took in the sight of Robin, the bright colours of the wound-flowers painted across her exposed skin, no part of her body left unmarked, except - her right leg, which looked as though it had been washed clean, skin bare and pink from the tip of her toes to just below her knee. There, thickly clustered and wrapped around her calf, was a band of roses; the white roses of Yorkshire, but lined through with scarlet and slightly shriveled, as though the ends of their petals had been dipped in blood and left out to dry in the sun.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Linda breathed. “I’m so sorry.” She sat down carefully on the bed next to her daughter, desperate to reach out and touch her, to bring her some measure of comfort; but she restrained herself, her arms held still and stiff at her sides.

“I think I’ll need to find some longer dresses for the summer,” Robin said, still in that odd, flat tone. And then her face crumpled, and she hid it in her hands and leaned into Linda, who wrapped her in her arms and held her as she shook, her tears hot as they slid down her cheeks and wet through the shoulder of her mother’s blouse.


	5. dirt in their roots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for all of your kind comments and words of condolence. They mean a lot, and they've really helped. I'm so grateful for every one! I hope to go through and respond individually, but it may take some time. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this chapter.
> 
> Chapter title from “I am in awe of flowers” by D. Antoinnette Foy

_Monday 29th March 2010_

On the first night that Strike spent in his office, the music from the cafe below throbbed up the metal legs of his camp bed, and though exhausted, he could not sleep. The ghost of his leg, blown off in Afghanistan, was an itch he couldn’t scratch; the ghost of his relationship with Charlotte, blown up not twenty-four hours ago in that beautiful and pristine flat only a cab ride away, was a fresh wound that he couldn’t help but prod.

He had picked apart the filthy scene, the weeks of filthy scenes leading up to it, pulling at every possible seam, lying here staring up at the dingy ceiling of his office. He had conducted this kind of post-mortem many times before, on countless sleepless nights, sifting through the wreckage of countless explosive arguments. This night was no different than any of the other nights he’d spent like this - except, of course, that it was, in its most fundamental aspect. He had been the one to walk away. It was final, this time, in a way it had never been before.

As he turned over onto his side, to stare at the dingy wall for a change of pace, he mused that it was different in one other respect: he had escaped last night physically unscathed, with not a mark on him. Thinking back, he was not sure if that had ever happened before. When enraged, Charlotte would inflict injury with any weapon she could lay her hands on. Projectiles - plates, glasses, books - had always been a favourite; once, she had whipped a television remote at his head with such vicious accuracy that he had seen stars. 

He should right now be sporting a black eye, at the very least, perhaps even scratch marks etched into his face by Charlotte’s perfect manicure.

Last night, as he turned at her door to take one last look at her stunning face, he had seen her lunge to grab the ashtray on the coffee table. He had flinched back, fully expecting her to let fly, but she had stopped. She’d stood still and straight, and stared at him, the look on her face indecipherable. There had been one frozen moment, and then she had dropped the ashtray in front of her to shatter on the floor.

Then there had been this morning, in his office. Charlotte had shouted obscenities, hurled insults, and smashed the contents of the front desk onto the floor (at least that had given the Temporary Solution--Robin--something to do). She hadn’t slapped him, though, or scratched him, hadn’t forced him to grapple with her as she clawed at his face. She had slammed her way out of the office without leaving a single mark on his skin to prove she’d ever been there at all.

She needn’t have bothered restraining herself. The marks that Charlotte left behind her had been left there long ago, burrowed deep beneath the surface, inoperable, fatal.

_One Month Later_

Cold water, hydrogen peroxide, more cold water, even more hydrogen peroxide - Robin had been scrubbing with numb hands at her trench coat in the kitchen sink for what felt like hours, and the blood still was not coming out. At first the water had run red and fizzing with it, but it was running clear now. Her little bottle of hydrogen peroxide was almost empty, and her neat, respectable beige coat was still stained through with Cormoran Strike’s blood. 

She supposed that it had sat for too long, that the blood had dried out and set into the fabric. She had spent hours with the stiffening coat in her lap, first waiting for Cormoran to be stitched up in Casualty, then for the duration of a long and probing interview with the police, and finally for what felt like an even longer taxi ride home with a tight-lipped and resentful Matthew. 

Cormoran had thanked her, between winces and muttered expletives, when she wrapped the coat around his bleeding arm as their cab sped towards the hospital, its driver looking as though he very much regretted picking up the fare.

She gave the coat a final rinse and turned off the tap, wringing it out and holding it up in front of her to inspect with a critical eye. She sighed. She would hang it up to dry, see what it looked like in the morning, but she had a feeling it was a lost cause. Perhaps they could do something with it if she sent it out to the cleaners. Or would it be easier and cheaper to just buy a replacement? _I’ll send the bill to John Bristow,_ she mused with a spark of grim amusement at the image of their client-turned-murderer opening an invoice complete with sundry expenses in his solitary jail cell.

With her coat hung up, it was time to follow Matthew to bed, where he’d headed as soon as they arrived home from the hospital. He was fast asleep by now, she was fairly sure; she should change into her pyjamas, climb in next to him, and fall asleep herself in the warmth and comfort of his arms. But now, with her hands empty, she had nothing left to distract her from her own circling thoughts, from mulling over that tremor of foreboding that she had stuffed down into some small, secret part of her in order to remain calm and unaffected while she waited in A&E, spoke to the police, to Matthew, to Cormoran.

When she closed her eyes, she could see the moment frozen in perfect clarity, as though it was tattooed on the back of her eyelids: the office demolished, Strike’s desk overturned and its contents scattered on the floor; Strike himself kneeling on top of Bristow, bright red blood spattering them both; the glint of a knife in Bristow’s hand, stabbing up; Strike, smashing what looked like an enormous club down into Bristow’s face. Robin had not fully comprehended what she was seeing at first, but then the flat and empty right leg of Strike’s trousers as he lay panting on the floor, and the club of his prosthesis discarded at his side, had snapped into place like the final two pieces of a puzzle, and the breath had been driven out of her lungs. 

She had stood as though paralyzed, unable to rip her eyes away from that staggering negative space. Then time had stuttered back into motion and so had she, helping Cormoran up, running downstairs to guide the paramedics, loading her bleeding boss into the taxi, staying practical and calm and keeping her head, and the whole time a part of her was detached and floating above them, a ceaseless refrain of mingled hope and fear drumming through her like a heartbeat: his leg, his leg, _his leg_.

His right leg, missing from just below the knee. 

The pale skin of her own legs was hidden by the thick black tights she habitually wore, but it didn’t matter. The band of shrivelled roses had become, after three years, as familiar as the sight of her own face in the mirror. She could see them now in her mind, bone white and blood red, wrapped around her right leg - just below the knee.

It was a coincidence, she told herself as she slipped into their bedroom and eased open her top drawer, feeling through her sleepwear until she touched the soft flannel of a long-sleeved pyjama set, which she took with her as she padded out of the room as silently has she’d entered, easing the door shut behind her. It had to be a coincidence. 

The overhead fan in their tiny washroom was too loud, the lights too bright. She brushed her teeth, scrubbed the makeup off her face, carefully smoothed her night-time moisturizer into her skin, braided her hair into a tidy plait. Finally, she could put it off no longer. _Calm down_ , she told herself firmly as she started to unbutton her blouse, keeping her movements brisk. _There’s nothing there. You’ll be laughing at yourself in a minute._

She shrugged off the blouse, letting it drop to the floor. A strangled sound escaped her, something between a laugh and a sob. She had seen Strike’s wound through his ripped shirt, wrapped her trench coat around it, applied pressure to stop the bleeding; the cluster of crimson roses, standing stark against the pale skin of her upper arm, matched it exactly. 

She had known, hadn’t she, somewhere deep inside of her in that frozen moment, that it was no coincidence; she had known the roses would be there. She remembered Cormoran, his massive body swaying and battered face glowering as he slurred _, “I wuzza boxer. ‘Narmy, mate.”_

A bloody boxer. Well. That was one mystery solved, she supposed.

She sat down heavily on the closed lid of the toilet. She had found him. Her soulmate. How was she supposed to feel, she wondered, staring at her hands. 

She closed her eyes, trying to unravel the knot of emotion twisting within her, looking for the ecstasy, the transcendent joy that every novel she’d ever read, every romantic comedy she’d ever seen, told her should be there. It wasn’t. There was a spark of excitement, a fizz of the giddy sort of satisfaction she’d always got after solving a particularly tricky puzzle, but they were buried under a mass of other, more uncomfortable feelings, the most predominant of which were confusion, dismay...disbelief. 

_Strike_. In all of her childhood fancies, all of her adolescent imaginings, she had never even come close.

She had enjoyed the past month more than any other in her uninspiring employment history. The work was fascinating, and her boss… She respected Strike, got on well with him, had grown to quite like him. She had thought of little else in the past week but how she might be able to stay, how she might puzzle out a salary for herself from the agency’s troubled books, how if she were permanent Strike could train her up as a proper detective. But...her soulmate? It had never even crossed her mind as the remotest possibility.

 _Matthew will never be okay with this_ , she thought, feeling the sudden sting of tears behind her eyelids. Her fiance had taken against Strike from the first; had made very clear his opinion of the work, the agency; was expecting her to start, two weeks from now, a nice, safe job in HR with a salary to match his own. All of these obstacles she could have got over somehow, she thought, wiping a stray tear off her cheek with trembling fingers, but not this.

She loved Matthew. She wanted to marry Matthew. She was not attracted to Strike, with his massive frame and his battered face and his pube-like hair, not in the least; the wound-flowers could not compel her _there_. Statistically, platonic soulmate connections happened all the time, no matter what the poets and films and magazines had to say about it. But Matthew had always been touchy about the marks, about soulmates, about other men. He would never believe that it was the work she loved, rather than Strike himself, not with that damning blotch of crimson on her arm.

There was Strike to think of, too. She remembered his drunken pontificating on the subject of soulmates, that night she had fed him a kebab and helped him stagger home. “ _‘S all bollocks, Robin,_ ” he had slurred angrily, gesticulating with a handful of chips. _“Bloody… stupid universe. A fuckin’ scam. Sorry. Sorry, shouldn’t say ‘fuckin’.’”_

Did he know? Had he realized? She cast her memory back over their brief acquaintance, rifling through her mental catalogue of their interactions. There was a possibility, she supposed. The very first day they had met, when he had nearly knocked her to her death and then drawn her back again... that night, she had seen the bruises he left on her breast, the clear shape of splayed and grasping fingers that Matthew had scowled at. But though Strike had inflicted the injury, he certainly had never _seen_ it, might not connect it to any marks that showed up on his own skin. She recalled the glimpse she had had, of the masses of thick hair that covered his stomach. Would he even be able to see any of the wound-flowers, under all that hair? He was living in his office, and he did not seem the type of man to scrutinize himself in the mirror of a morning.

Though his behaviour towards her was friendly enough, in his way, he was also very reserved. He had never shown any sign of interest towards her other than as an employee, never hinted at a knowledge of, or wish for, a deeper connection. She would have to assume that he had not seen, that he was ignorant of it. 

If he saw…if he found out…would he still want to work with her? Would he allow her to stay? Would he expect something more?

She had been sitting on the toilet, staring into space, for too long. Her legs were beginning to go numb. She got up, her movements wooden and sluggish, and began to pull on her pyjamas. 

The thought came suddenly, with a flicker of hope.

Wouldn’t it be better all-round, be less complicated for everyone, if neither Matthew nor Strike ever found out? Robin stared at her face, pale and wide-eyed in the mirror. Was it possible? She buttoned the flannel shirt of her pyjamas slowly, her thoughts racing. If she was careful, if she was diligent… She had long ago perfected the makeup techniques that masked the appearance of the wound-flowers on her face. She tended towards styles that covered her skin anyways, had taken to wearing nothing above knee length without opaque tights after Matthew’s reaction to first seeing the roses on her leg. Could she…?

 _There’s no other way_ , she thought, as she crawled into bed beside the snoring Matthew. She couldn’t give up a chance at her dream, not again; and, if she was smart about it, there was no reason she should have to.

Her bed was even warmer and more comfortable than she’d expected, and her eyes were heavy, the long and exhausting day finally catching up with her. Her thoughts lingered on the image of Strike’s dark and scowling face, and with a flash of resigned amusement, her final thought before sliding into a deep sleep was, _Of course._ Her soulmate _would_ bring with him a heap of trouble, and complications, and anxiety. _When had he ever done otherwise?_


	6. dropping fanlike petals on eternal soil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay on this chapter! I got thrown out of the writing groove, and some changes to the story required a re-write. Hopefully the updates will be a bit more regular from here on. Thank you to you all for your comments and your patience. Extra thanks to Bethany for the wonderful beta reading, and to @phia_nix, whose conversation and suggestions have been immensely helpful. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Chapter title from Rooftop Soliloquy, by Roman Payne

_August, 2010_

Robin tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting the warm water of the shower wash over her face. She stretched lazily, deeply contented, her muscles pleasantly sore. Blinking the water out of her eyes, she realized that she had missed this--the satiation, the utter relaxation. She had not felt this way in some time, she realized, not for months. Not, in fact, since she had decided to stay on full-time with Strike. Since that day, there had been an odd distance between her fiancé and herself, a strain that had spread to every part of their relationship. 

After the arrest of Lula Landry’s killer, the press had made much of Strike’s history in the military, mentioning the amputation of his leg in every story they had written. She had been sitting with Matthew when he’d first read it, had seen the suspicion in his eyes as his head jerked up to stare at her, heard the tension in his voice as he quizzed her for more details about her new boss. He had never asked outright, though, perhaps afraid of hearing the answer; and so she had not had to lie. She had evaded, and shifted the topic every time it came up, played dumb and played it down.

She had never kept secrets from Matthew before, especially not one this big. She had tried hard to compensate for the secret kernel of guilt eating away at her, devoted her energy to him, to _them_. But her attempts to connect with her fiancé - the extra housework, packing his lunches with little love notes, the careful planning of at-home date nights (now that their budget was necessarily constrained) - had had lukewarm results at best. Matthew had spent much of the three months since the arrest of Bristow alternately irritated and snappish or cold and distant.

But last night had been different. Robin smiled dreamily as she worked conditioner into her hair, remembering the dinner with which Matthew had surprised her, the bottle of wine he’d chilled, the candles he’d lit. They’d laughed and talked as they ate by candlelight. Matthew had been warm and funny, and had held her hand, dropping occasional kisses on her ring. When they had moved to the bedroom, it was as if the fire between them, latterly banked to coals, had roared back to life. Thinking back, Robin could not remember the last time Matthew had been so passionate, so considerate in bed. They had settled down to a routine, she supposed, had got used to each other, and then with her new job and the tension in their relationship… Perhaps they now had turned the corner. Perhaps Matthew had finally been reassured of his place in her life, in her heart.

As Robin turned off the water and emerged from the shower, dripping onto the bathmat, she reached for a towel to wrap around herself and another to squeeze the water out of her hair. She hummed happily as her mind drifted over some of the more pleasurable moments of the previous evening, and wiped the fog off the bathroom mirror. The tune that she had been humming died on her lips.

Matthew was in the bedroom picking out a tie when Robin stormed in, wearing nothing but a towel, her face red and hair lying damp on her shoulders. She didn’t speak to him, but sat down in front of her dressing table, her back straight and stiff. She continued to ignore Matthew as she arranged her makeup in front of her, dotted primer onto a sponge and began to spread it over her skin.

“You alright?” 

Matthew, it seemed, had noticed the change in her mood and was watching her in the mirror. She met his eyes, a surge of fresh irritation rising at his innocently quizzical expression.

“No,” she said, throwing down the tube of primer. “No, I’m not alright. Look at this!” 

Matthew smirked at her in the mirror as she pointed to the cluster of purplish-red love bites, dark against her pale skin, which trailed up and across her throat to just below her jaw.

“You know I hate these,” she cried, her eyes flashing with anger. “They’re going to take forever to cover up, and I’m going to be late for work.”

Matthew tried to arrange his expression to one of sympathy, but failed utterly. Robin set her jaw and turned back to the mirror, fumbling for her bottle of foundation. 

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said, moving behind her and resting his hands on her bare shoulders. She tried to shrug him off, but he held his grip and leaned down to rest his chin on her damp hair. “Really, I am. I didn’t mean to.” 

Robin harrumphed, and Matthew leaned down to nuzzle her neck, heedless of her damp hair against his crisp white shirt. 

“How can I help myself when I have the most beautiful,” he pressed gentle, apologetic kisses along her skin, “the sexiest,” Robin could feel herself thawing, and almost involuntarily tilted her head back into Matthew’s firm chest, “the most gorgeous fiancée in the world?”

“Get off, you,” Robin murmured, trying to hold on to her irritation, but it was slipping away through her fingers, melted by the warmth of Matthew’s hazel eyes and his breath on her skin. Matthew grinned at her in the mirror, and she felt her lips twitch in response. One last kiss to her shoulder, and Matthew let her go. Robin turned her attention back to her face in the mirror, began to dab foundation onto her skin. There was no way she would have enough time to cover the marks on her throat properly, not if she wanted to be anywhere close to on time. She sighed, put the foundation down, and went to go dig through her drawers for a scarf.

\--

As she listened to the clanging of the metal stairs under Strike’s weight, his tread slightly uneven as he stumped down them towards the street, Robin let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She leaned back in her chair and felt the tension drain from her body, relaxing for the first time that morning since Strike had walked into the office, since she had looked at him to see the trail of violets peeking out over his shirt collar.

She had known, of course, that they would be there, but seeing them was a different matter entirely. She had tried not to blush, tried to meet his gaze and behave normally, greeting him and handing him his mug of tea as she did every morning. She was not sure how well she had succeeded. 

Strike had seemed distracted, quieter than usual. After a brief discussion of the day’s work, he had retreated into the inner office and closed the door behind him. All morning, she had sat stiffly at her desk as she typed, hyper aware of the scarf tied carefully around her throat, resisting the urge to fiddle and fuss with it.

Finally, blessedly, Robin had been granted a reprieve. An urgent phone call from one of their most lucrative clients, an unscheduled emergency lunch meeting, and Strike was off. The client liked their lunches, so Strike probably would not return until mid-afternoon, and until then she had the office to herself.

She rolled her shoulders back, stretching, and then turned back to her computer. She scrolled back through the report she had been writing up; there were more typos than usual. She sighed, and set about fixing them.

Barely five minutes later, the harsh sound of the buzzer startled Robin out of her concentration. She frowned. They had no appointments scheduled, no deliveries or visitors planned. She pressed the button on the intercom.

“Yes?”

“Robin, it’s me.” Matthew’s voice was tinny, but clear, and Robin gaped at the speaker. Matthew had never before been to the office, never visited her at work. What was he doing here? She was startled out of her confusion as the buzzer went off again. She pressed the button to let him in and stood up from her seat with a sudden jolt of nervous energy.

If he needed to speak with her, he could have called - was there some kind of emergency? What could he need to see her in person to tell her, in the middle of the day? Vague images of death, of disaster, crowded her mind as she saw Matthew’s familiar silhouette behind the glass of the office door, which he opened himself instead of knocking. She searched his face for hints of the dreadful news, but he looked as cheerful as he had that morning, and grinned as he walked towards her. 

He kissed her cheek, a salute she accepted mechanically. “What’s happened? Are you okay?”

Matthew laughed a little, and stepped back, his hands in his pockets. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?” He glanced around the shabby little office that he had never seen, taking in the battered filing cabinets, the new pleather sofa, Robin’s tidy desk and the little potted plants she’d placed along the window ledge.

Robin stared blankly at him, but he did not appear ready to enlighten her. “Why are you here, Matt?”

“Thought I’d take you out to lunch,” he said easily, his gaze still roaming around the room. “If you’re not too busy.”

Robin stared. Matthew had never offered to meet her for lunch before, never even allowed for the possibility. He’d angrily pointed to the tube ride between his Canary Wharf office and Soho, a ride that he claimed would make lunching together impossible, as one of the drawbacks of her working with Strike. He was watching her now, his eyebrows raised.

“That’s a lovely idea,” she said, rallying. “Let me get my things.”

Matthew nodded, stepped back.

“Is Strike in?” His voice was carefully casual. “I should introduce myself. Is that his office?”

Without waiting for a response, Matthew had turned towards the inner office. He’d opened the door before Robin could speak, striding through to Strike's space. She followed him, an icy suspicion crawling up her spine and seeping through her veins. When she reached the door, he was standing in the middle of the empty room, looking deeply disgruntled.

“I thought you said you were both in the office today,” he said, rounding on her, his handsome face darkening into a scowl.

The certainty of what Matthew had planned, what he had done, crystallized. Her feet frozen to the floor and her hand clutching the doorknob, she stared at him, tall and handsome in his crisp suit, standing in the middle of the empty, shabby office with his hands balled into fists at his side. 

_Not reassured, then._

Behind her blank face, her mind scrabbled for purchase. She couldn’t accuse or confront him. To do so would be to acknowledge his suspicions, to confirm their possibility. She had to act as if nothing was wrong.

She hiked a smile onto her face, choking down her swelling fury, and forced her feet into movement.

“Cormoran got called away,” she said, walking to Matthew and linking her arm in his. “He’ll be hours. I bet I could get away with an extra-long lunch,” she added, keeping her voice sunny and leaning up to kiss Matthew’s cheek. She pulled him forward, towards the outer office, and he followed her with grudging footsteps. “Where were you thinking?”

She closed the door firmly behind them as they left.

\--

Strike strolled along Oxford Street smoking, a little overfull after a lengthy lunch at his client’s expense. The meal had been delicious, and the meeting itself had resulted in what would likely be several weeks more of lucrative work for the agency. However, the nagging unease that had dogged Strike all morning had not dissipated.

He had seen them that morning in the little mirror he used to shave with, a flash of colour as he stood to rinse his razor. The memory of a dirty German lavatory, a bottle of whiskey in a spartan barracks bedroom, had frozen him in place for a moment before he'd dropped the razor in the sink, picked up the mirror with numb hands, and tilted his head back for a clearer view. 

They were different this time, violets instead of foxgloves, clusters of flowers rather than a thick band. He had stared, trying to interpret the pattern, trying to uncover the shape of the hands, of the thick grasping fingers that had done it - but without success. He had tried to convince himself that there was another explanation as he dressed, tried to imagine some other means of accounting for the bruises, but his thoughts kept circling back to that long, miserable night in the German barracks, to the frustration and misery of that sleepless vigil.

He had sequestered himself in his office for most of the morning, accomplishing very little in the way of work, and had been glad for the distraction of his client’s request for a meeting. Now, strolling through the bright summer sunshine, he couldn’t stop himself from dwelling once more on the flowers, on _her_.

As he turned into Denmark Street, a flash of bright gold just ahead roused him from his reverie. Robin was standing on the pavement outside of the office, talking to a tall, tawny-haired man in a dark suit. Strike, about to hail her, slowed his steps instead. The man had leaned down to kiss Robin, a brief peck but clearly proprietorial; this, then, must be Matthew. Strike had no desire to meet his assistant’s fiancé. From reading between the lines of what little Robin had told him, Strike had formed the opinion that the accountant was a bit of a prick. 

As Robin unlocked the outside door of the office, and Matthew turned to walk away, Strike ducked into the doorway next to him to finish his cigarette. He watched as Matthew walked past. The accountant didn’t seem to notice him; he was staring straight ahead and walking briskly, his handsome face tight with what could be anger. Strike watched the man’s back until he turned out of Denmark Street, then dropped his cigarette, ground it under his heel, and continued up the road.

Robin was standing in the middle of the office when he entered. At the sound of the door, she jumped and whirled to face him, her hand dropping from where it had been fiddling with the scarf she was wearing tied around her neck.

“Sorry,” he said, closing the door behind him and heading to the kitchenette. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” 

“Oh… that’s alright.” 

His back turned as he filled the kettle and set it to boil, he didn’t see Robin’s blush, or see her adjust the chiffon of her scarf. He heard her sit down, heard the click of the keys as she woke the computer and began typing. When he placed her finished mug of tea on the desk beside her, she muttered her thanks without looking away from the screen. Strike, not in the mood for conversation himself, withdrew gratefully into the inner office to brood as his tea grew cold beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all had a lot of faith in Cormoran's noticing abilities! Unfortunately his chest hair is just THAT thick, and he is a great big idiot about some things. Sorry if anyone is disappointed :)


	7. let me moor to your quiet waters and hide under flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was co-authored by [Blue_Robin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Robin/pseuds/Blue_Robin), who graciously offered to help me out of a horrible writing rut, and then ended up writing a significant chunk of this like an absolute miracle. All credit for the chapter's existence goes to her! Follow the link to read her wonderful fic, and definitely sing her praises in the comments :)
> 
> I've gotten back into the writing rhythm now, so we'll see how it goes - but I am determined to finish this before Troubled Blood comes out (although I've said that before about other fics, you know, like a LIAR).
> 
> Thank you as always to Bethany, who is a wonderful beta reader and emotional support person.
> 
> Chapter title is from Emmanuelle Soni-Dessaigne.

_ September, 2010 _

“You’ve met my boss, haven’t you?” Matthew demanded, his booted feet striking the pavement so hard he was nearly stomping, the anger simmering just beneath his skin dissonant with the quiet prettiness of the leafy residential street. “Why is it that I’m not allowed to meet yours?”

“It’s just difficult, finding a time that works,” Robin said, trying for earnest but ending up somewhere near exasperated. She had been using this excuse for weeks, and knew that it would not continue working for much longer; but she also knew that under no circumstances could she reveal the real reason she wanted Matthew and Cormoran nowhere near each other. She would have to find a new evasion strategy soon.

“You’re telling me he can’t take two whole hours—” she could hear the barely disguised sneer of derision in the words “—away from sniffing sheets, to—”

“For God’s sake, Matt, I’ve told you the work is different, that it goes into the evenings—” she interjected, but Matthew ignored her, steamrolling on. 

“He has one employee—one! And he can’t be arsed to meet your fiancé? Or maybe,” he slowed his pace slightly, angling himself to look over at Robin. She couldn’t remember ever seeing such an ugly sneer on his perfect features before. “He’d rather just keep you to himself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Robin said forcefully, ignoring the flutter of panic in her stomach at Matthew’s insinuation. “ I’ve told you, he’s just—”  _ What, Robin? He’s just what? _ “—he’s not the type to socialize outside work, he likes to stay professional.”

Matthew stopped abruptly and rounded on her, glaring. “Well, which is it? He’s not the type, or he doesn’t have the time?”

“Why is this so important to you?” Robin fired back, stepping into Matthew and matching his glare with her own. He scoffed and turned away, but Robin followed. “Why do you even want to meet him? You don’t like the job, you don’t like me working for him, you’ve been clear about that—” 

“Because it’s fucking rude! He knows you’re as good as married, he should want to meet me,” he spat back at her over his shoulder.

“Why? So you can stake a claim? Make it clear that I belong to you?” Matthew’s angry silence, the glare he shot her, were answers enough. “For God’s sake, I’m not your property Matt, you don’t need to warn other men off me!”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to, if you weren’t clearly  _ hiding _ him from me!” 

“I’m not  _ hiding _ anything,” Robin shouted at his back, but Matthew had surged ahead, his long legs eating up the pavement between them. He didn’t glance back.

She felt a sudden flood of guilt at the sight of his tense shoulders. His accusation— _ hiding something _ —ringing in her ears, Robin ran to catch up with him, to try and smooth things over, to make amends. He was her fiancé. She had to try.

“Matt, wait,” she called, but he showed no sign that he’d heard her, his pace unchanging, and she huffed in irritation, speeding up until she was only a pace behind him. 

Then, with a wrench, the heel of her boot caught fast in a crack on the sidewalk. “Oh,” she gasped, as she was brought up short, reaching out a hand to Matthew, trying to brace herself and remain upright. But her hand only brushed the cashmere of his jacket, the fabric slipping through her fingers as he moved out of reach, and with a sickening pop and a searing stab of pain, her ankle rolled and pitched her to the ground.

Hearing her cry of pain, Matthew turned around; at the sight of her sitting hunched over on the pavement, clutching her ankle, tears already streaming down her cheeks, he ran back, dropping down next to her. His face, which had been a mask of fury not thirty seconds ago, now radiated loving concern. “Robin, are you alright? Is it broken?”

Between gasps of pain and fear and the anger with Matthew that lingered still, she managed, “I think…I need...a scan.”

As Matthew helped her off the pavement, and she hobbled clumsily back the way they’d come with her arm slung around his shoulders and his wrapped around her waist, his other hand already busy dialing for a taxi, the pain in her ankle was almost overwhelmed by the panic, her thoughts white-hot and frantic as they circled — she couldn’t hide this from Strike, he’d see, he’d  _ know _ —

It wasn’t until much later, while she was lying back on the hard plastic table, chilly in her flimsy hospital gown and listening anxiously to the humming and clicking of the MRI machine, that it registered. 

The wound-flowers couldn’t bloom on his missing right ankle.  _ She was safe. _

\--

As she clumsily navigated the stairs to the office the next day, her new crutches making her feel more wobbly than safe, Robin tried to soothe her shaky nerves.

Despite Matthew’s best efforts at being solicitous, and his earnest attempts to persuade her to stay home even as she’d dressed that morning, she had insisted on going into the office, claiming a heavy workload but secretly desperate for some space. 

Though their argument of the previous night had been dropped in the dash to the hospital, Robin hadn’t been able to stop turning it over in her mind: the ugliness of Matthew’s naked fury as he shouted at her, the way her own anger had mingled with the well of guilt inside of her to make her heart pound in her ears, the sickening sensation of her stomach dropping as the fabric of her fiancé’s jacket slipped through her fingers. 

But now, as she finally levered herself up to the landing outside the office door, she couldn’t shake the undercurrent of anxiety that was telling her she should have stayed home, that this was dangerous, that somehow, against all logic and reason, he would  _ know _ .

It was too late to turn around and go back home. She would just have to get on with it. Steeling herself, she fumbled a little with the doorknob before she managed to get the office door open. She swung through and came face to face with Cormoran, who had been making tea at the kitchenette counter. 

“ Hi,” she said, a little breathless (from the climb up the stairs, of course) but Cormoran didn’t answer. She could see his quick eyes scanning her, taking in the obvious lack of sleep shadowing her eyes, the crutches propped uncomfortably under her arms, the clunky grey plastic boot that encased her right ankle and foot.

“What happened?” he asked, abandoning the tea on the counter and striding over to swing the door closed behind her. Without being asked, he took her crutches from her and offered her his arm so that she could hop over to her desk. 

“Matthew and I were going to have dinner with some friends of his, and the heel of my boot got caught in a crack.” She landed in her office chair with a huff and a grateful glance at Cormoran, who propped her crutches against the wall behind her desk, within arm’s reach. 

“Ah. Nasty.” He turned and picked up her wastebasket from its spot next to the desk, carrying it to the larger bin in the kitchenette and emptying it as he asked, “I’m assuming it’s just a sprain?” She nodded.

“The doctor said there was a tear in the ligament, though,” she said, watching him fuss around with the wastebasket, curious. “I’ll be off it completely for a couple weeks, at least.”

He made a sympathetic sound as he crossed back to her and gently tugged her chair away from her desk, leaving her hands, which had been poised to begin typing, hovering over nothing. Bending over, he placed the wastebasket upside down under her desk, before carefully easing her chair back to its position so that her ankle could rest, elevated, on the bottom of the wastebasket. 

“Did the boot make it? Or was it a casualty as well?” His eyes twinkled with humor, clearly trying to make her laugh. 

“Casualty, sadly,” she said, shaking her head mournfully and feeling the urge to laugh for the first time in over fifteen hours. “The heel snapped right off.” 

“Bugger,” he said, putting a curious Northern inflection on the word. “Did they give you anything for the pain?” He resumed making his tea, and started a cup for her as well. 

“No, just paracetamol and ibuprofen,” she answered, waking her computer and logging in, pulling up their shared email and starting to sort through the new messages. 

“Well, if you need something stronger,” he began, his voice muffled slightly. “ I’ve got some of the good stuff upstairs.” A mug of tea landed next to her elbow, followed by one of the disposable ice packs that Strike kept on hand. “Put that on it.” 

“You know you’re not supposed to share medication,” she chided him, accepting the bag of ice and leaning down to undo the straps on the walking boot, taking out the front piece and unwrapping the soft liner to place the ice against her ankle. She sighed in relief as the cold eased the throbbing that had worsened over her trip on the tube, before gingerly sliding back into the knee hole and placing her foot back on the wastebasket. He snorted at the chastisement, moving back to pick up his mug and lean against the counter of the kitchenette.

“Nevertheless. Let me know if it gets too painful.” 

Robin didn’t answer, but continued sorting emails while Strike drank his tea in silence. She was trying valiantly to ignore the warm contentment spreading through her chest, that feeling of being cared for that none of Matthew’s hovering and fussing had managed to produce, but which after less than five minutes in the office threatened to bring tears to her eyes.

“What a pair we make, eh?” Strike said suddenly. Robin startled and blushed, looking up to find him grinning broadly at her as he gestured at his own right leg. “ Two good legs between us. We’ll have to try and muddle through.”

“Very funny,” Robin said drily, but she couldn’t stop the corners of her lips from twitching as she turned back to her computer

Judging by her pink cheeks and the way she was hiding her face from him that she had been sufficiently cheered up, Strike said,“Couple interesting inquiries in the inbox. I read them, but wanted to wait until you were in to make a decision.”

“OK. I’ll take a look.” 

“Let me know when that one isn’t cold anymore and I’ll get you a new ice pack.” Without waiting for her agreement, he walked back into his office, making a mental note to retrieve his own crutches for her before the end of the day. It was clear she was unsteady on the cheap crutches they’d given her, and his would allow her a greater range of movement, once he’d adjusted them for her. He could make do without them for a week or two.

As he lowered himself into his chair, he found himself thinking, without meaning to, of the wound-flowers. Robin’s soulmate, whoever he was, would have them blooming around his ankle even now. He wondered what they would look like, whether they would be roses, or bluebells, or perhaps something more unusual, some flower he’d never seen. Unbidden, the figure of Matthew intruded on his musings. He’d only seen the accountant the once, but had retained a clear mental image of the man’s handsome face, tight with anger. Was it his ankle that was now decorated with the evidence of Robin’s injury?

He gave a small shake of his head at the thought. He didn’t think that Matthew was Robin’s soulmate; the idea of it just didn’t feel right. Something about the way she spoke of her fiancé, the evasions and hesitations, the stories she told, made him certain that the two weren’t linked, not in that way.

It wasn’t as if he could ask her, even if he was a bit curious. He would never dream of asking anyone something so personal. Most people wouldn’t. It wasn’t that finding one’s soulmate was a secret, far from it—he remembered his friend Nick, 18 years old and flushed red with beer and happiness, leaning over the pub table to whisper to him that his old friend Ilsa had tripped on one of their dates, had skinned her knee, and that when he’d gone home, he’d seen…

But Robin wouldn’t be confiding any such thing to him. He’d been careful to keep their relationship professional, to maintain a respectable distance between them and avoid friendly intimacies.

He shook himself out of his reverie as his computer beeped with an incoming message.  _ Stop it, you prat _ , he told himself firmly, swinging around to focus on his work.  _ She’s your employee, it’s nothing to do with you. _

But it took him longer than usual to marshal his thoughts into order, to stop himself thinking that while he’d been busy devouring a curry and watching the football, Robin had been injured and in hospital and that somewhere in the world, there was a man wearing her wound-flowers in homage.


	8. a carpet of flowers beneath your feet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Blue_Robin for her incredibly helpful feedback and validation; and as always, a million thanks to Bethany for being an absolutely amazing beta reader!
> 
> Chapter title from "Hind’s Feet on High" by Hannah Hunard

_December, 2010_

The borrowed taxi was old, its interior battered and smelling of stale cigarette smoke. It handled well, though, and Robin had driven the planned route between the Chelsea Arts Club and Scotland Yard twice, there and back, without incident.

She turned into Denmark Street, then pulled up smoothly to the curb outside the office to let Strike out. His knee was still sore, she knew; no matter how much effort he put into disguising his limp, he could not hide the sprays of cowslip that had clustered around her right knee for weeks, and which, as of that morning, were still bright and blooming. So she would spare him the walk back to the office from the Q-Park in Chinatown where the taxi would stay until tomorrow night - until they could put Strike’s ambitious, reckless plan to catch Owen Quine’s killer into action.

“Think you’ve got it?” Strike said. “The traffic should be lighter, but there’s another blizzard in the forecast.”

“I think so,” Robin said. “But…”

“But?” Strike paused in the act of opening his door, his eyebrows raised. 

Robin hesitated. She hadn’t told him of her suspicion that she’d been seen rummaging through Tassel’s bin, nor did she plan on telling him. She was sure he’d insist on finding someone else to play her part if there was a risk of her being recognized. She was confident in her own driving skills, in her ability to deliver Tassel safely. However…

If something did go wrong, if she lost control of the car somehow…it wouldn’t take much, just a bruise or scrape in the wrong place. Strike had only just agreed to train her properly as a detective. She had worked too hard, been too careful, to have everything fall apart because of a moment of carelessness.

She had to make sure that nothing went wrong. 

“Just give me one second,” she said, and closed her eyes. 

She tried to picture the scene as it would be the following night, the dark and the snow and the murderer, playing it through in her mind. Elizabeth Tassel would climb into the cab, and the door would lock behind her. She would be distraught, Strike had said, too distracted to notice where Robin was taking her until it was too late. But if she did notice, if she did realize...

Robin opened her eyes again, watched her hand reaching out of its own accord, sliding back the divider between the driver and the backseat. Strike, following her movement, frowned. 

“Do you think there’s a way to secure this?” Robin said, sliding the divider closed again. “Just in case?”

“Yeah,” Strike said, reaching out to try sliding the panel himself. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll talk to Nick’s dad, get something figured out.”

\--

Robin’s hands on the steering wheel were shaking, just a little, as she drove slowly up the Victoria Embankment. The rolling expanse of the Thames was dark and silent on her right; the wrought iron fence and pale grey stone walls of Scotland Yard loomed on her left. The snow was still falling thickly, piling on the tops of the black bollards and tall trees that lined the pavement.

She flicked her gaze up, meeting Tassel’s in the mirror; the woman’s eyes were almost black in the low light, flat and lifeless, like a doll’s eyes.

At first, when her passenger had realized that something was wrong, that they weren’t going the right way, she had scrambled to escape, pushing desperately at the locked doors, clawing at the partition, shouting at Robin to stop the car. As they had passed through Sloane Square, the woman had begun banging on the partition with her fists, screaming incoherently, and Robin had had a brief stab of fear that the divider might, after all, fail. But the little locking bar that Strike had installed the previous day had held, and Robin had continued to drive steadily through the thickening snow.

As they had passed the sleek glass and metal wedge of the Victoria Underground Station, Tassel had fallen silent and still in the backseat, her eyes fixed unblinkingly, unsettlingly, on Robin’s face in the mirror. Robin thought, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white, that she might have rather preferred the screaming.

Now, as she pulled up to the tall wrought-iron gate, a shadowy figure came into view, standing on the pavement and outlined indistinctly against the snow. She came to a stop and the taxi’s headlights illuminated the man, dressed in a heavy coat with his arms crossed over his chest, his face heavily scarred on one side and scowling fiercely. This, then, must be Richard Anstis, alerted to their arrival by Strike over mobile.

She looked away from Anstis and up to meet those empty black eyes in the mirror once more, holding her gaze steady. 

“Elizabeth Tassel,” she said, then took a deep breath and continued, just as Strike had coached her, “I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest for the murder of Owen Quine.”

Tassel said nothing. There was a flash of bright red in the mirror as the little Alfa Romeo Spider pulled up behind them. Robin watched as the passenger door opened, the large frame of her boss appearing slowly as he carefully extracted himself from the tiny car. She rolled down her window as Strike approached the taxi and leaned down, bracing his hand on the car’s roof to peer into the cab.

“You alright, Robin?” He seemed anxious, looking her up and down for injury even though she was still belted safely into her seat.

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, more calmly than she felt. “I told her, just as you said.”

“Right,” he nodded, glancing back at the stiff figure of Tassel through the plastic partition. “You hold tight while I talk to Anstis.”

Robin rolled her window back up as Strike straightened, turning his back on the idling taxi and trudging through the snow towards Anstis, who stepped forward to meet him.

“The fuck do you think you’re playing at, Strike?”

“I have proof that Tassel killed Quine,” Strike said flatly. His anger at Anstis’ refusing to hear him out over the phone, necessitating this drastic action, had not yet burnt itself completely out. Anstis scoffed, but Strike ignored him and continued, “I have proof, and she knows it. If you let her walk away now, you’ll wake up tomorrow morning to a suicide and the press up your arse.”

“You wouldn’t dare go to the press with this,” Anstis hissed at him, backed into a corner and clearly furious.

“I won’t have to,” Strike shrugged. “If Quine’s agent turns up dead they’ll start sniffing around anyway. No forensic evidence, no real witnesses…your case is going to fall apart pretty damn fast.”

Anstis said nothing, frowning down at his shoes. Strike watched for a minute as the man’s mental cogs turned, his internal struggle with Strike’s words written clearly across his face, before he spoke again.

“You can still salvage this, Anstis. Take her into custody on the strength of my evidence, and get a warrant to search the home. You’ll find the guts where I told you, I guarantee it.”

“Leonora Quine--”

“Is innocent,” finished Strike firmly, ignoring Anstis’ scowl.

Strike pulled out a cigarette and lit it, the match flaring brightly in the dark street. He shook the match out and dropped it in the piling snow at his feet, inhaling deeply and then exhaling through the swirling snowflakes, not bothering to aim the smoke away from Anstis’ face.

“So, Rich?” He said, the other man seemingly unwilling to break the silence. “What's it going to be?”

Anstis made a jerking signal with his arm to the shadowy person sitting in the guard house, and the gate began to trundle slowly open with a mechanical whir. “Drive in,” he said with a grimace. “We’ll question all of you. Get to the bottom of this.”

Strike grinned, dropped the stub of his cigarette into the snow, and saluted Anstis lazily before turning back to the cars. He thought he might join Robin in the passenger seat of the taxi. As luxurious as the interior of his brother’s sports car might be, it really was hell on his knee. 

\--

It was hours later when the Met finally released them. With Anstis finally, grudgingly, convinced of the truth of Strike’s assertions and Elizabeth Tassel in custody, they had waved goodbye to Al outside of Scotland Yard as he sped off in the Alfa Romeo. Robin had watched him round the corner with a wistful stab of regret that she hadn’t been able to have a go behind the wheel of the sports car. Now, with Strike sitting beside her, a simultaneously exhausted and elated Robin pulled the taxi into a space in the near-deserted parking garage.

“Are you sure you don’t want to drive home?” he asked as she shut down the engine, not for the first time since they’d left Scotland Yard. Robin shook her head.

“The tube is still running, I’ll be fine. There won’t be any street parking near the flat, not in this snow.” Privately, Robin was more concerned about what Matthew’s reaction would be to the sudden appearance of a borrowed taxi. While she had texted him earlier, telling him that she would be very late because they were meeting with the police, she had not been entirely forthcoming with the finer details of what she had done that night.

“I’ll walk you to the station then.”

“Oh, you don’t have to--” Robin began, but he silenced her with a look. She rolled her eyes a little, but passed him the keys--Nick’s dad would be picking up the taxi from him tomorrow--and fell into step beside him as they strolled out of the parking garage and into the wide paved square, the entrance to Chinatown in front of them with its distinctive metal arches.

The streets were quiet now, nearly empty, the usual late night revellers and stragglers driven inside by the blizzard that had laid down the masses of white through which they trudged, the final gasp of the storm softly falling around them. Robin stayed alert as she walked in case Strike should slip on the snowy street; she could do without the hassle of any wound-flowers appearing on her skin this evening. However, she did not fail to take in a deep, cleansing breath of the cold, crisp air, nor to appreciate the way the unbroken snow glittered in the glow of the streetlamps.

They had walked together in comfortable silence for some minutes before Strike spoke.

“I suppose I should start looking for surveillance courses in January,” he said casually, looking not at Robin but at the frontage of the theatre they were passing. It took a moment for what he had said to register for Robin, but when it did she almost tripped over her own feet.

“Really?” She blurted out, grabbing Strike’s arm to steady herself. He looked down at her, surprised, but she’d already snatched her hand away.

“Yes, really,” he said gravely, but his lips were quirking upward as though he was trying to contain a laugh.

“Thank you,” she beamed up at him, too happy for restraint. “Thank you!”

“I’m the one who should be thanking you,” he pointed out as they resumed walking. “You were incredible tonight.”

“Hardly,” Robin scoffed, feeling her face flush and praying that the darkness of the street would hide it from Strike. “I drove two miles through the middle of the city.”

“Two miles through a blizzard with an unhinged murderer in the backseat,” corrected Strike. He had a fresh cigarette stuck between his lips and was lighting it, the flaring match cupped in his hands. “That takes nerve, Ellacott. And skill.”

It took Robin a moment to find her voice. “If you say so,” she murmured at last, not trusting herself to say anything more.

“I do,” Strike said contentedly, taking a deep drag of his cigarette.

Robin could no longer feel the cold of the snow through her boots, not with the remnants of adrenaline coursing through her veins and the boost of frantic happiness that the thought of surveillance courses had given her. She could feel her skin buzzing with excitement, tingling with warmth and so much joy she almost feared she'd explode with it at any moment. 

“Does it always feel this _good_?” She asked abruptly, as they approached the underground station. “Catching a murderer?” Strike glanced over at her and then fixed his eyes on the pavement, considering.

“No, not always,” he said finally. “When it does…” He paused as she looked at him expectantly, then smiled softly at her as he continued, “Well. You should savour it.” 

“Right,” she said, looking down at her feet, feeling her face flush again for some reason. She resisted the urge to press her chilly fingers against her burning cheeks.

They had emerged from the covered construction walkway to the familiar sight of the Tottenham Court Road station. The pavement and streets were deserted. Strike and Robin were alone as they drew to a halt outside the entrance to the station.

“You’ll text me when you’re home safe?” Strike’s curly black hair, the shoulders of his heavy coat, were dusted with snow, and Robin could feel flakes of it melting on her cheeks as she looked up at him, blinking.

“Of course,” Robin said, in a mood to indulge his protectiveness. She felt a sudden inexplicable urge to hug him, but pushed it down. He held out his hand and she took it; but to her surprise, he didn’t shake it, apparently content to simply hold it warmly in his own.

“Night then,” he said, smiling down at her. “Partner.”

And then her breath caught in her chest as he lifted her hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it. His lips lingered for the length of one heartbeat, two, his stubble tickling her skin, and then he dropped her hand. His cheeks were red with the cold and his smile slightly crooked as he stepped back. She laughed a little, flustered and delighted, and then her feet were carrying her to the escalator without the input of her brain. She looked back as she descended, saw Strike standing there still, watching. She waved, feeling ridiculous as she did so, but he had disappeared from her view before she could see if he waved back. 

She was just in time for her train. She boarded the empty carriage, sitting down and leaning against the cool of the window. She exhaled, shakily. She could still feel the press of Cormoran’s lips on her skin, brief as it had been…

 _He didn’t mean anything by it_ , she told herself firmly. It was just a bit of old-fashioned chivalry, one of those startling flashes of incongruity with which Strike always managed to surprise her. They had caught a killer together; he had called her his partner. There had been a moment, a flash of connection--not _that_ connection, of course. It was nothing to do with _that_ , with…the soulmate bond. It had simply been the connection of two people who worked well together, who understood each other. It was a celebration, a congratulation. That was all.

It had been a long night. She was overstimulated, overwrought. She would need to get a hold of herself before she got home, before she saw Matthew. Robin closed her eyes, and leaned back against her seat, and breathed.

While the rattling train carried Robin home, Strike walked slowly away from the station, smoking and thinking. 

Robin had looked so lovely, practically glowing with excitement and pride in the shadows of the street, framed by the softly falling snow… In the initial heady flush of shared triumph, he had let his guard down and given in to the impulse of a moment. It had been reckless. Dangerous. Her wedding might have been postponed, but she was still engaged; he had crossed a line, broken down part of the barrier that he himself had erected between them.

In that suspended moment, in the dark and silence of the snowy street, it had felt as if they were the only two people alive in London. He could still feel the skin of her hand, soft and cool against his lips. He took another drag of his cigarette.

He would have to be much, much more careful in the future.


	9. a lifetime in a garden one afternoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go to Blue_Robin for her feedback, suggestions and help in escaping writing jams, and to Bethany for her excellent beta reading, as always :)
> 
> Chapter title from Craig D. Lounsbrough

_January, 2011_

Strike grimaced as he pulled himself up the last few steps to the office landing. A morning of surveillance might not have been the wisest idea he’d ever had, not after he’d woken up that morning to a knee throbbing and swollen. He still had not recovered fully from the injury he’d done himself at the end of November. He should’ve been resting yesterday evening rather than traipsing around London after a blameless housewife on a shopping trip, but such was the life of a private investigator. 

At least soon he’d have someone to share the physical load with, he mused, pausing on the landing to catch his breath. Robin would be leaving for her surveillance course on Monday. When she was back, he’d have another trained investigator to lean on, someone to trade off surveillance with when his leg was buggered like this.

On the strength of these happier thoughts, he pushed open the office door. He greeted Robin, who was working industriously at her desk, but didn’t linger longer than it took to divest himself of his heavy coat and scarf. He was desperate to get off his aching leg. He made it to his own desk and collapsed into the chair, closing his eyes and sighing with relief.

A few moments later, a soft knock on the inner door interrupted his reverie, and he opened his eyes to Robin, who was placing a steaming mug of creosote-coloured tea on his desk, and next to it—

“I thought we were out of these,” Strike said, surprised, picking up the disposable ice pack.

“I picked some up on my way to work,” Robin said, her back to him as she rustled through the filing cabinet. “Thought it’d be good to stock up.”

“That’s some bloody lucky timing,” he said, angling himself so that he could press the ice pack against his sore knee. “Either that, or you’re a psychic and never told me,” he teased. Robin’s shoulders stiffened, and the back of her neck flushed scarlet.

“Not psychic,” she said lightly, her face hidden from him in the folder she’d pulled out and was examining. “I just have a well-organized to-do list.”

“That must be why I pay you the big bucks,” he joked. His mood had lifted startlingly quickly as the cold of the ice pack seeping through his trousers softened the sharp edges of his pain. Robin closed the metal drawer with a bang and turned around, a handful of files clutched to her chest.

“Am I getting the big bucks?” she said with feigned innocence. “You should let my bank account know.”

Strike laughed.

“Would you like me to pass you some paracetamol?” Robin asked, pausing at the door to the outer office.

“Yeah—wait, shit,” he cursed, remembering. “I think I left them upstairs.”

“I have some in my bag.”

“You’re a bloody life-saver,” he said with heartfelt gratitude when she placed the brand new bottle of paracetamol in front of him.

Some time later, once the paracetamol had kicked in, bringing the pain in his knee down to a dull ache, Strike wandered back through to Robin’s desk.

“You know what I could use? A pint.” 

“It’s not even four o’clock,” she exclaimed. She turned away from her computer to laugh up at him, her blue eyes bright and sparkling.

“It's Friday,” he pointed out—quite reasonably, he thought. “We’ve got no one else coming in today, all we’re doing is going over those files…why not take them to the pub?” The suggestion was an impulsive one, borne less from a genuine craving for real ale and more from the realization that after today, he would not be seeing Robin again until she’d completed her surveillance course, two weeks from now.

Robin bit her lip, considering.

“C’mon,” Strike coaxed. “You’ve definitely earned it. I owe you a round, for the ice packs. If we go now, you can have a drink and still get home on time.”

“Well…alright then,” she said, clearly pleased, despite herself, with the idea of skiving off early.

Strike bundled himself back up as Robin shut down her computer and tidied her desk. He took her coat from the coatrack by the door and held it out for her to slip her arms into. 

“Looking forward to your course?” he asked as she flipped the lights off and walked through the front door. 

“Well, I’ve been doing a bit of research, just so I’m prepared,” she said excitedly, starting down the stairs ahead of him.

“Naturally,” he chuckled.

“Oh, hush,” she chided as he tugged the outer door open, gesturing her ahead of him once more, before stopping to light a cigarette. 

A chilly wind blew her hair into her face as they began making their way through the drawing dusk toward the welcoming warmth of The Tottenham. She tucked it behind her ear, then asked, “Have you got any advice to give me? Any suggestions?” 

“I doubt you’ll need it.” He grinned at her as they paused outside the pub so he could finish his cigarette. “You’re a natural. You just need a bit more experience, and this course will give it to you.”

As they entered the pub, Robin found a corner table, while Strike went to the bar to obtain their drinks. Once established, they divided the files to be reviewed between them. One round turned into two as their conversation drifted away from the work at hand, and then into a third pint for Strike and a soda for Robin as the pub filled up around them and they abandoned the files completely.

Strike had begun sharing stories of his training in the SIB when Robin’s phone buzzed. She picked it up, still laughing at Strike’s account of a fellow trainee who had tripped and fallen directly into the path of the trainer he was supposed to be following, but when she read the message her face fell. 

“Everything OK?” Strike asked, watching as she rapidly typed into her phone, frowning.

“Fine,” she said, looking up. Her smile was a bit smaller, a bit more brittle than it had been just a moment ago. “I just didn’t realize how late it was, that’s all. I should head out.”

Strike checked his watch as Robin stood up, startled to see that it was well past six o’clock. It must have been Matthew texting her, wondering where she was.

“Leave those, I’ll get them,” he said as Robin started shuffling the files back together into a neat pile. She shot him a grateful look, and then after a hurried goodbye she was gone, the door of the pub banging behind her.

Strike settled back into his seat, staring into his pint and thinking about Robin. He felt vaguely guilty about losing track of time; from the speed with which she had left and her anxious frown, she would have an angry fiancé to placate when she arrived home.

He had rarely worked so well with a partner as he did with Robin. Her sharp intuition, her seemingly endless well of empathy, had made her an invaluable asset to the agency. It was those same qualities, he mused, which had manifested themselves in her quiet, practical concern for his leg, somehow knowing exactly what he needed, without him having to say a word, and giving it to him without fuss.

He thought about Charlotte, when they had been together in the immediate aftermath of losing his leg. She had oscillated wildly, sometimes weeping dramatically at his loss, at others caring for him with a lavish kind of solicitousness, or—more frequently as time went on—reacting with anger and disdain when faced with his new limitations. It was pointless to compare the two, of course, but—

With a jolt, he realized that this was the first time he had thought of Charlotte in weeks. She had haunted him for so long—after their split, in the lead up to her marriage to Ross, and he had presumed that he would never be free from the aftereffects of loving her, the virus that was Charlotte burrowed deep in the marrow of his bones. But as he’d sat here, picking apart the memories of her, he’d felt for a moment oddly distant, dispassionate. Almost as though he might finally be free from the aching longing that had tinged the image of her in his mind for so long. 

What had changed? Was it simply time and distance that had done it? 

Perhaps her final, unforgivable lie had succeeded in severing those final threads of their connection that had weathered all of the other lies and betrayals, all of the vicious arguments and filthy scenes that had pulled them apart so many times before. 

Or had his longing for her simply been temporarily blunted by the comparison with Robin, with his partner’s restful presence and calm thoughtfulness, their easy camaraderie?

He did not want to follow where such thoughts might lead. He drained his pint. He would go home to his tiny attic flat, watch the football match and rest his knee, and keep his thoughts well away from treacherous waters.

_February, 2011_

Robin swirled her merlot, watching it slide back down the sides of her glass, her face fixed in an expression of polite interest as Sarah Shadlock described—in intricate, exhausting detail—the renovations that she and her boyfriend Tom had recently undertaken in their kitchen. The group sitting around their living room were Matthew’s friends and work colleagues, and they all appeared to be engrossed in the difficulties of choosing between teal and seafoam for the backsplash tiling.

They were celebrating Matthew’s recent promotion, garnered in part due to his best friend Tom putting in a good word for him. Robin and Matthew had already met with Tom and Sarah for drinks the previous week, in thanks and to celebrate. Matthew had been so proud, so pleased, and whilst in the middle of a speech expounding on his future prospects, had slipped in: “Yeah, Robin’s so chuffed she’s putting together a little get- together at our place, next Saturday.”

Robin, of course, had been planning no such thing, a fact that had simmered into a row on the way home. Matthew had accused her of being unsupportive and ungrateful, and Robin had pointed out that he hadn’t thought her promotion to junior partner worth throwing a party. But she had backed down eventually, in the interest of peace and a with a slight tinge of guilt at the thought that perhaps she was, after all, not being supportive enough.

So Robin had planned a little get-together. 

She had arranged a guest list big enough to feel like a party, yet of a size to fit inside their small flat. She had spent every evening that week, after a long day of work, doing the shopping, the cleaning, the cooking. And now, as a reward, she was spending her Saturday night drinking mediocre wine and talking kitchen renovations.

Her eyes strayed to the bouquet of white roses sitting in a glass vase on the dining room table. Robin had almost recoiled when she’d opened the door to find Sarah with her arms full of the creamy blossoms. She had no idea what the woman was thinking, bringing flowers as a hostess gift. It simply wasn’t done. A gift of flowers, fraught with implied intimacy and possible meaning, was a strange thing to give to even a close friend. Coming from Sarah, it bordered on inappropriate. Robin had never felt that Sarah’s cloying manner towards her was genuine, suspecting that her dislike of Matthew’s old friend was mutual, borne perhaps out of Robin’s status as the boring girlfriend from home who’d stood in the way of Sarah’s attempts to bed Matthew.

The fact that she had chosen white roses was an unfortunate coincidence, of course. There was no way that Sarah could know about the band of the flowers on Robin’s leg; Matthew would never have told her about them, _never_. Sarah could not have known about the dislike that Matthew had conceived for the white rose of Yorkshire ever since they had branded his fiancée’s leg, a symbol of her connection ( _belonging,_ as she thought Matthew might conceive of it _)_ to another man.

So Robin had plastered a smile on her face, and accepted the roses, and arranged them in a vase for display. Matthew’s eyes had narrowed as she’d brought the flowers out to the table, but she had ignored his accusatory stare as she sat down with the group, pouring the wine and passing the hors d'oeuvres.

Matthew had been giving her the cold shoulder ever since, focusing his attention, his banter, his laughter on Sarah, but Robin couldn’t bring herself to mind as much as she should. If he wanted to blame her for his friend’s _faux pas_ , then fine. It meant that she could fade into the background, stay silent in the group conversation, and reserve her energy for plating dinner. 

As she watched Matthew’s handsome face, snickering at some crude joke of Tom’s, she had the sudden thought that in a matter of months, she would be Matthew’s wife. She supposed that nights like these would be common in their married life: drinks with Sarah and Tom, having to feign interest in their goings-on, being expected to host them, and others, as Matthew continued to climb the corporate ladder.

She turned the thought over and around in her mind, and took another gulp of her wine.

_March, 2011_

Strike was deep into reviewing his notes on a particularly tricky divorce case when a knock at his office door roused him. 

“Cormoran? Do you have a minute?”

He looked up to see Robin, poking her head around the door—he’d left it ajar, but she was always scrupulous about politeness when entering ‘his’ space. He motioned to her to come in, and set aside the file with a faint sense of gratitude. She perched on the edge of one of the chairs across from his desk, clutching a notepad in her hands, and he noticed that she looked anxious, with her brow furrowed and her bottom lip caught between her teeth

“We’ve just had an inquiry,” she said, then stopped. 

“Yeah?” Strike prompted cautiously. It was clear that Robin was afraid he wouldn’t like what she was about to say.

“A woman, who…” Robin appeared to be working up her courage. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and said, “She wants us to find her soulmate.”

Strike sighed, and leaned back in his chair. “Robin—” he began, but like a dam had broken, the words were spilling out of her now.

“I know you don’t like us to take on that kind of case, and I understand why—”

“Because they’re a waste of bloody time and resources,” he interrupted.

“—but I really think we should consider this one,” she continued on, without any sign that she’d heard him. 

Robin placed the notepad she had been holding on his desk. The first page was completely covered in her neat writing. She must have been on the phone for close to an hour to take that many notes, he realized, and raised his eyebrows at her. She flushed, catching his meaning, but determined, she went on.

“She’s been tracking her flowers for decades, so there’s quite a bit of information, and from what she said some of the…” Robin hesitated, then went on, “the wound patterns are distinctive enough that we’d have a place to start.”

“We don’t do soulmate cases,” Cormoran said flatly, pushing the notepad back across the desk towards her with one finger.

“Well, maybe _we_ should start,” Robin countered, her voice fierce and her jaw set. “There’s good money in them, and it helps people.”

Cormoran hesitated, taken aback by her vehemence.

Robin was right that the search for soulmates was usually a boon to the business of private investigation. Most agencies would happily take on as many of the cases as they could, spinning them out for as long as they would pay; Strike was unusual in his disdain for them. 

Perhaps this was why she was being so insistent. He had long been promising her that he would raise her wage, just as soon as was feasible. Perhaps Robin had grown tired of being paid a pittance while he turned down lucrative lines of work. 

Sensing the hesitation in his silence, she leaned forward.

“What if I was the one to take them on?” she asked. “It’s the kind of research I’m good at anyway.” 

“Even if you’re good, they’re almost impossible to resolve,” he argued. “Soulmate cases are dead ends. They’ll drag on for ages until the client gives up, and then they’ll fight the invoice.”

“Couldn’t we try, just the one? Cormoran, this woman...” Robin spoke slowly, seemed to be searching for the right words as she went. “She’s fixated on finding him. She tried all of the matching apps, and it didn’t work. She’s started scratching messages onto herself, trying to get her soulmate to respond…”

“Maybe there’s a good reason he hasn’t,” Strike countered. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

“I’m worried she’ll do herself a serious injury if we don’t help,” Robin admitted quietly. “If we found the soulmate, we could reach out ourselves, understand the situation-”

“And if our meddling makes it worse?”

“Don’t we already meddle for a living?” Robin asked, a faint smile playing around her lips. “What makes this different?”

He said nothing. He knew there was no rational defense for his position, none at all. His aversion to searching out soulmates was personal, entirely down to his own experiences and prejudices. He could hardly argue that she shouldn’t be allowed to take on paying cases because of her partner’s hang-ups. 

Robin was still sitting there, staring him down. He sensed that she had prepared for this confrontation, marshaled and practiced her arguments, and that she wouldn’t leave until he capitulated. He sighed.

“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “You can take this one on, as a trial. If it goes well, we can talk about others.”

“Thank you,” she said primly, but her tone was at odds with the smile on her face that made him think perhaps he didn’t mind losing the argument all that much after all.

About to get up, Robin paused. Strike watched as she opened her mouth, closed it again, silent in some internal struggle until finally—

“Did you ever look?” she blurted out. “For your—” she cut herself off, her face beet red, but Strike knew what she had been about to say. A moment of silence, and then—

“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” she said hastily as she jumped up out of the chair, nearly tripping in her haste to turn and leave the office

“No,” he said to her back, before she could flee. She turned around slowly to meet his eyes, still blushing furiously. “No, I never did.”

He was unsure as to why he had answered her; perhaps he had fallen prey to the same impulse that had driven her to ask, the insatiable sense of curiosity that they shared driving them beyond the bounds of conventionality and good sense.

“Why?” Robin asked, when it seemed as though nothing else would be forthcoming. He shrugged.

“It’s bollocks. The whole thing.”

“You’ve said that before,” she said, smiling faintly.

“Did I?” He asked, surprised. He didn’t remember ever before having spoken about the subject of soulmates with Robin.

“Yes, when you…” she seemed to be searching for the right words. “You were quite drunk,” she finished.

“Oh. Sorry.” Strike had only the vaguest flashes of memory from the night that he’d discovered Charlotte was engaged to Jago Ross, when he’d gotten so drunk he could not stand. Robin, just his temp then, had found him and got him home safely.

“It’s alright,” she said, and then with characteristic tenacity continued, “You didn’t say why you thought it was bollocks, though.”

“Because…” Strike paused. He could fob her off with some canned response about free will, but for some reason he felt compelled to be honest. “Because they can be wrong. The wound-flowers,” he clarified. “I’ve seen them be wrong.”

He waited, with a sinking stomach, for her to probe deeper, or to argue that the wound-flowers weren’t _wrong_ , that the nature of the connection between soulmates just wasn’t fully understood—he had heard the argument before—but she didn’t. She was quiet for a moment, standing there before his desk, looking down at her hands where they rested on the chair in front of her.

“But they can be right, too,” she pointed out eventually, flicking her gaze up to meet his, some unreadable emotion in her eyes.

“Doesn’t matter,” Strike shrugged. “If they can be wrong at all, then the whole thing is rubbish.”

“I suppose,” she murmured, but he had the impression that she wanted to say more, that she was holding herself back. Whatever it was, though, she kept it to herself as she turned to leave.

“What about you?” he asked impulsively, as she reached the door. “Did you ever go looking?”

“No,” she said, without looking back. “No, I didn’t.”

Robin pulled the door shut behind her as she left, the latch clicking into place, and it was with a strange sense of disquiet that Strike turned back to his notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew, that was a long chapter! I know I've been drawing out the suspense a lot, but don't worry... the days of Oblivious Strike are almost at an end ;)


	10. never blows so red the rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go to Blue_Robin for being a fantastic sounding board, writing partner, and for her wonderful suggestions, and to Bethany for being an absolutely outstanding beta reader.
> 
> Chapter title from Omar Khayyám, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

_ April, 2011: Part One _

Robin sat on the edge of the bed, staring into nothing. She felt hollowed-out, her eyes puffy with exhaustion and tears. She hadn’t slept. After she and Matthew had shouted themselves hoarse; after the hideous revelation that he had slept with Sarah, had been sleeping with Sarah, for months and months, during the worst time of Robin’s life, when she had thought he was the kindest, most supportive man in the world; after she had taken off the ring that had glittered from her finger for the last year, in the early hours of the morning, she’d thrown a blanket at him, told him that he could sleep on the couch. And then she lay alone in their bed, sleepless and staring at the ceiling, reliving the arguments of the last forty-eight hours, over and over. 

All of the arguments had, in the end, been about Strike. Even those about the wedding, or about money, had skirted around the detective, his name unspoken but hanging above the couple as they’d bickered and shouted. His presence in her life, her feelings for him, Matthew’s suspicions and jealousy had been lurking at the edges of every harsh word he’d spat at her. 

Robin felt a bitter laugh bubbling up her throat. This, when it had been Matthew all along who was unfaithful, who had been projecting his own infidelity onto her, who had been laughing and bantering and flirting with Sarah, right in front of Robin in a hundred pubs and restaurants, in her own home...

Robin had felt so guilty for so long. She had wanted to keep the job she loved and her fiancé both, and in doing so she’d hidden the truth from Matthew. She knew it was this that had slowly splintered them apart, and even though she also knew that being honest about her wound-flowers would have done the job just as surely, she still could not escape her own culpability.

But even at the height of Matthew’s anger, as he’d shouted at her across their cramped sitting room, he had not articulated that essential kernel of truth, had he? He had not given voice to that suspicion that she knew had taken root in his heart, a seed that had grown into the tendrils of jealousy and resentment that snaked through him. Why had they continued to dance around it, even as their relationship crumbled and fell apart? 

There was no point keeping it secret, not now, not from Matthew at least. She had no relationship to protect anymore, she thought, as the tears welled up again. Yet at the thought of going into the living room, of telling Matthew all that she had hidden from him, she balked. She felt as though she was held in place, frozen on the edge of the bed by an unspoken taboo that she could not break, as if she had kept the secret for so long and it had grown and grown under her skin until it was too big to excise, to bring out into the light. 

She was so tired. 

Dully, she wiped away the hot tears that had started to roll down her cheeks. She hadn’t thought she had any tears left, not after last night.

She could hear Matthew moving around outside the bedroom. She would have to face him soon; their flat was too small to escape without him intercepting her. She still didn’t know what she was going to do, how she was going to get up, and leave the flat, and begin to untangle her life from his after nine years spent weaving them together. 

She felt lost at sea, untethered and adrift from the future that she had once been able to picture so clearly. 

_ Focus _ , Robin told herself.  _ Pull yourself together _ . She would have to get through the working day, and find some way to keep herself from breaking down in front of Strike. She would have to find somewhere to sleep that night—she knew that she wouldn’t be able to return to the flat that evening, that she couldn’t bear to spend another night like the one she’d just had. She had packed a holdall with a change of clothes, some toiletries, and it sat at her feet now. 

All the rest—the enormity of the confrontations and decisions she would have to make, as well as the pain to come—she would just have to lock it all away, down deep inside, until she could gather the strength to face it. 

\--

Strike left Robin at the bottom of the stairs at Hazlitt's Hotel, shaken, tear-stained and tipsy and insisting that she would be ready for work as usual the next morning.

It was only a brief walk, through the winding streets and alleys of Soho, from the understated Georgian elegance and helpfully secured entrance of the hotel to his shabby attic flat. Strike made the journey completely oblivious to his surroundings, shaken to his core by the revelations of the past few hours.

Not just that Robin's engagement had ended—although that had stirred something deep inside of him, emotions welling up at the sight of her bare left hand that he would have preferred to stay dormant. No, the news that she had called off the wedding, significant as it had felt in the moment, was nothing in comparison to what had come next.

He had listened, with growing dread, to her halting explanation of why she had left university. Between handfuls of crisps, she had stripped all of his defenses away, left him staggered and reeling.

_ "He tried to strangle me; I went limp and played dead and he ran for it." _

He had not been able to control his expression at those words, which had reverberated through his bones. He had felt the shock of it clearly written on his face. She had glanced at him, and then away, fixing her gaze on the door of the pub over his shoulder as he struggled desperately with the reins of his emotions.

He hadn't questioned her revelation, hadn't probed for details or dates, had not indicated by anything he said any interest further than that of her partner, her friend. After all, how could he without betraying himself? If it was just a coincidence...and surely it was just a coincidence...

Now, as he trudged up the metal staircase past the office door and on to his rooms above, he was trying very hard not to perform certain mental calculations in his head. The attack had happened while she was at university. But when, exactly? He was not sure precisely how much of her degree she had finished; she had never said. Three years was not a narrow window of time. How many other women in the world would have been attacked during the same period? Hundreds, probably. Thousands.

Reaching his flat, Strike fumbled a little with his keys before he managed to get the door open. He took only a few steps in, sitting heavily at his little formica kitchen table, reaching for his packet of cigarettes as he did so. It wasn't her. It couldn't be her—wouldn’t he have felt something, if it was? He could not have worked with his...his soulmate—there was no reason he should shy away from the word, was there? He could not have worked with his soulmate for a full year without sensing her presence, without feeling the connection between them. He was a detective, for fuck’s sake. If Robin was his soulmate, he would have seen the signs, would have read it somehow in the things she said, the things she did.

But in his mind as he sat there smoking, he saw again the images he had been unable to stop himself from seeing on that night in Germany, one of the longest nights he'd ever endured. The woman he'd imagined then had been dark, blurry and faceless - yet now he saw her clearly in his mind and her eyes were pale blue, one of them swollen shut, and purple bruises stood out livid against pale skin, and her strawberry blonde hair spilled bright across the cobbles of a dark alley...

Strike cursed at a sudden stab of pain. His cigarette had burned down to the filter without him noticing, burning his finger. He stubbed it out into the ashtray and pulled another out of the swiftly-dwindling pack.

He inhaled deeply as he lit the cigarette, forcing his mind away from the spectre his memories had conjured, and tried to think rationally, to search for evidence as he would in any other case. She had been injured, since he’d known her—that sprained ankle, her torn ligament—but with a sudden chill, he realized that it had been her right ankle. There was no way he could’ve… Inconclusive.

He too had been injured, he realized; he’d been stabbed. She had cared for him, and seen the wound, and surely if it  _ was _ true then she would have seen the flowers too. But she had remained professional, friendly, the same Robin that she had always been, and surely that was evidence against. 

He had to admit to himself that there was a possibility. A small one. But no more than that—it was not a certainty. There was nothing supporting it but circumstantial evidence, and he was not about to go making wild assumptions based on circumstantial evidence. Robin could be...it was possible... She hadn't been ruled out, that was all.

He would do nothing, say nothing, about this. What mattered now was still what had mattered that morning, as he'd arrived back from Scotland to see Robin's face, puffy and tired over her mug of tea. What mattered was catching the maniac who had sent her a severed leg, who had taken a wrecking ball to their business. What mattered was keeping Robin safe and sound, and whether that was complicated by tonight's revelations, well. He would deal with that—whether or not there was truly anything to deal with—when he had the time, and the space, and the evidence properly laid out before him.

\--

Robin woke up with her head pounding, her mouth stale and dry, her tongue feeling as though it had been papered over with sandpaper and tasting even worse, and her eyes burning at the light streaming through the unfamiliar curtains.

For one brief, merciful heartbeat, she had no memory of how she had gotten here, of why she was alone in a bed that she could feel was not her own—enormous and empty, the duvet too heavy on top of her, the sheets too soft against her skin—but then the sickening memories came crashing down on her and the nausea rose in her throat.

She scrambled out of the bed, her head spinning, and stumbled towards the open door that she hoped to God led to a loo. She was lucky, for the first time in what felt like years. The tile was hard under her knees as she heaved, her arms braced over the toilet bowl, her nose and throat burning. After, she wiped her mouth with shaking fingers, dropping the toilet paper into the bowl, which she flushed, noting dully as she did so a single pink campion blossom staining the side of her middle finger, between the knuckles. She had seen Strike hold his cigarette just there, a hundred times; she knew what had made that little mark, already fading into her skin. She would have to try to cover it, to hide it…but what was the point in that now?

She slumped back against the wall, resting her aching head gingerly on the cool tiles and closing her eyes. She was not sure she could stand up—she wasn't sure she wanted to. Perhaps she would simply stay here forever, cocooned from the dreadful consequences of last night by the quiet luxury of the hotel room.

She had told him. After being so careful for so long, after all of the near-misses and obfuscation, the constant watchfulness and anxiety and a full  _ year _ of walking on eggshells, she had ruined everything, and it was entirely her own fault. She had gotten drunk on a bottle of bad wine; wretched and exhausted, she had let her guard down; then she had spilled out to Strike the one story that she had sworn to herself he would never know.

Cormoran Strike was a detective. He could ferret out the truth from seemingly inconsequential details, oddities, scraps of information—she had seen him do it before. And this was no minor puzzle piece, no tiny part of a larger picture incomprehensible without the context of surrounding pieces. No, she had given him that central fact around which all others revolved, the corner piece from which he could build the rest as easy as breathing.

Had some part of her wanted Strike to know the truth? Had she been hoping that he would finally figure out the secret that she had been carrying alone for so long? She’d been so worn down, so tired and bloody miserable... Had her drunken confession stemmed from some unconscious urge to light the charge herself, to blow it all up and let the shrapnel of her life fall where it would?

Well, it was done. She couldn't take it back or explain it away. She would have to pick up the pieces as best she could…  _ Starting with getting up off the bathroom floor _ , she thought, levering herself up with a groan and wincing against the fresh pain that stabbed through her head with the movement. Two paracetamol, a mug of instant coffee with powdered creamer, and a hot shower later, Robin—feeling marginally more human—stood wrapped in the fluffy robe she’d found hanging in the closet, ironing the heavily-creased blouse that she had pulled from her holdall, considering her options.

Her job was all that she had left, now, and soon she might not have even that. Strike had seemed normal enough when he’d deposited her at the hotel, but he’d had the night to reflect, to decide that her history made her incapable of doing the job, that he no longer wanted to work with her, now that he knew the truth...

Robin’s phone buzzed. Her heart stuttered as she picked it up and saw Strike’s name on the caller ID, as if he’d been summoned by her thoughts. She took a deep breath, and answered.

The conversation was brief, matter-of-fact, and the relief Robin felt upon Strike’s assurance that of course she still had a job—his apparent confusion as to why she would think otherwise—was profound. Nevertheless, her predominant feeling as she waited for him outside of Hazlitt’s, freshly showered and crisply dressed, was anxiety. She refrained, with difficulty, from pacing until his taxi pulled up and she could climb in.

But Strike gave no sign, by words or demeanor, that anything had changed between them. Robin was hyperaware of him beside her in the backseat of the taxi on the ride to Scotland Yard; as they met with Wardle to look at the photographs of the young girl who had been reduced to slabs of meat and shoved inside a fridge to rot; then later, as he sat across from her in the pub, drinking beer and tea respectively, discussing possibilities and making plans. 

Through all of this, Strike had been his usual self—steady and gruff and focused intensely on the case—and Robin’s anxiety had been left without a foothold, to swirl formlessly in her chest, doing nothing to reduce the lingering nausea of the hangover.

And now, after a long night and day and a three-hundred–mile drive later, they were together in the dark front seat of the Land Rover, parked outside a takeaway in Barrow-in-Furness, eating fish and chips and discussing the three men Strike believed might have sent them a severed leg. 

Robin had spent the past two days resisting the compulsive urge to bring all of the things that hovered unsaid between them into the open. It had become almost a physical presence to her, enormous and pressing up against her chest, drawing her to the edge of the cliff to look over and fight the impulse to jump. But somehow, the words kept freezing in her throat before they could tumble out. 

Robin could feel Strike beside her, stewing in the anger that the mention of Whittaker always seemed to stir inside of him. She had refrained from pressing him for details about his stepfather, but now the silence seemed to stretch too long, too charged, and she felt a pressing need to fill it with anything other than the fears beating against the walls of her chest.

“What do those lyrics mean to Whittaker?” she blurted out. Strike glanced over at her; she couldn’t quite make out his expression in the dim light.

“I told you,” he said, and she could hear the scowl in his voice, “My mum loved the song. Had the title tattooed on her.”

“Loads of people could have known about that tattoo, though,” Robin pressed on, knowing full well that Strike did not want her to. She herself had seen the tattoo, curling above Leda’s dark pubic hair, the result of a furtive, guilty Google search that she had quickly wiped from her history. “There must be something else to it. Some special significance.”

Strike didn’t answer, chewing a handful of chips and washing them down with a swig of McEwan’s.

“The tattoo…” he said finally, making Robin jump; he had stayed silent for so long that she thought he wouldn’t answer. He paused, long and heavy, before he continued, “He said it was how he knew. That they were…” Strike’s mouth twisted, as though he couldn’t make himself say the words. “He said he’d watched her getting the tattoo, years before. That he’d watched it bloom on his own skin.”

As she grasped the meaning of what Strike had said, a frisson of shock rippled through Robin, freezing her hands in place where they had been wrapping up the remnants of her dinner. In all of her internet sleuthing, in all of the articles and web pages that she had read, she had come across no hint of it. The idea that Leda Strike had been connected to a man like Whittaker, that Cormoran believed his mother had been murdered by her own soulmate, was almost too monstrous to comprehend.

“Are you sure...” Robin paused, unsure of how to ask the question. Had Whittaker been telling the truth, all those years ago? Could his stepfather have been lying, manipulating his mother into staying with him on the strength of imaginary flowers? But she did not have to finish her question; Strike had picked up on the drift of her thoughts. 

“Very,” he ground out, reluctantly, through gritted teeth.

The images were still vivid in his memory, even after so many years. Whittaker, stinking and swaggering, his eyes alight with malice; Strike, just sixteen and overflowing with a rage so hot and pulsing that he had lost all reason, swinging his fist at Whittaker’s face; the brief satisfaction as it had connected with a crunch, wiping the smirk of the man’s face and sending him crashing backwards into the flimsy wall of the squat; and then cold horror, revulsion, nausea swelling in his throat as he’d watched the flowers bloom across his mother’s cheekbone, spiky purple thistles and clusters of pale yellow cinquefoil. 

He had dropped his fist and stepped back, averting his eyes from Whittaker’s gloating triumph, from the sight of his mother crouched over the prone body of her husband. He’d never hit the man again—though God knows he had wanted to, so many times; could not be in the same room as him without the familiar rage rising up and making his fists curl. He felt it now, as though he were balanced on the edge of a precipice over a dark and writhing pit that he could fall into at any moment.

Robin had said nothing further, had not offered commiserations or asked more questions. He was glad. They sat in silence as he finished his second can of McEwan’s, and then at her soft “Shall we go, then?” he nodded, and with a grinding of gears, they set off in the ancient Land Rover.

They were given rooms five doors apart in the Travelodge. Strike had stripped off his clothes and his prosthesis with gratitude as soon as the door swung shut behind him, and let the warm water of the shower soothe his aching muscles. Now, as he lay naked beneath the covers of the hotel bed, sleep eluded him.

In the silence and solitude his thoughts circled back, inevitably, as they had done almost without cease for the past two days, to the question that he was still unable to answer. He had added up the evidence over and over again in his mind.

"Did you ever have a pony?" he’d asked, unable to stop himself, not with the battered old Land Rover painting such a clear picture of weekends spent at the gymkhana. 

Robin had looked startled, but answered: "Angus. He was a bugger. Always carting me off."

He’d smiled a little at the Yorkshire in her accent when she said “bugger”, unable to help himself even as he’d added another piece of evidence to the pile. 

His usual instincts, honed over a lifetime, to investigate, to probe deeper, to uncover the truth at all costs, seemed to have deserted him. He felt a strange reluctance to sift through the facts once more, but did so anyway, totalling up every gesture and hint and coming up short. 

He could easily find proof, he thought, staring up at the ceiling and thinking back to playground rituals, bloody knives and adolescent bravado and a palm that had stayed bandaged for a full week. If he marked himself tonight, in his hotel room—if he went to his shaving kit and dug out a razor and inscribed a message on his skin as their unlucky client had done, what would he see on Robin’s tomorrow?

Or he could simply ask her, he supposed: a cleaner, more rational, possibly less painful means of getting at the truth. He could get up now, dress himself and walk down the hall to knock at her door. She would invite him in; he could picture her clearly, her hair rumpled and her eyes soft with sleep…and then what would he say?  _ Robin, remember how you told me about the worst twenty minutes of your life? Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some more details—nail down the specifics… _ He snorted abruptly with disgust at himself, the noise loud in the quiet room. He was a detective, for God’s sake. He was perfectly capable of finding out, one way or another. But something was stopping him, holding him back from confirming it for a certainty.

He thought again of Whittaker: his stepfather, naked and leering, forcing his little sister to flee back to Cornwall; Leda, the look of worship on her face as she listened to Whittaker’s rants; Leda cold and stiffening and alone, dead on that filthy mattress; Whittaker, grinning malevolently at him from the witness box at his trial...

Strike cursed himself angrily, rolling over onto his side, and forced his thoughts away from his darkest memories and back to Robin. She had ended her engagement only two days ago, he reminded himself, and he was not so sure that that was permanent. She and Matthew had been together for nine years, there was a wedding planned and paid for. Her dress would be hanging up in her closet in Masham. Perhaps she was on the phone with him even now, listening to him beg for another chance, being worn down by his pleas. What business did Strike have, wondering...

Anyway, he told himself, if it were the case—that they were soulmates—Robin would know, would have known for some time. He had concluded that much as a certainty. Surely she would have told him—she would not have kept a secret of such magnitude from him. But she had said nothing; ergo, there was nothing to say. He was grasping at straws, manufacturing connections where there were only coincidences. For some reason, though, what should have been a comforting reassurance left him cold and just as sleepless as before.

Five doors away, Robin had not yet made it to bed. Too unsettled to sleep, she had paced the overly-warm room; had switched the tv on before switching it off again almost immediately; had spent a minute wrestling with the stiff window in an attempt to clear out the stuffy room with a chill breeze. Now, she was sitting fully clothed on the still-made bed, staring at her phone, lost in thought.

She had been picking over the past two days in her mind, scrutinizing Strike’s behaviour, trying without success to decide whether or not he had figured out the truth, attempting to decipher his feelings. Finally, frustrated, she flopped backwards on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It was no use. Strike was inscrutable, and she was stuck in limbo. She was coming very close to going over and knocking on Strike’s door to have it out with him once and for all, and never mind the outcome. What harm could it do, when she was certain he already knew. 

Well, fairly certain. 

Reasonably certain, anyway. 

She tried to imagine how she would begin the conversation, when he opened the door to his room. Would he be asleep already, she wondered, or was he, like her, unsettled and restless? Perhaps she could make some excuse, some pretext for a conversation that would let her ease into it. He would stand back, giving her room to walk in, then he’d close the door behind her, and… she could get no further than that, could not imagine how to form the words to start.

Her thoughts drifted to the text she had received from Matthew earlier that day:  _ If you sleep with him, we’re over for good _ . Perhaps she wouldn’t need words at all... Almost against her will, the image presented itself: Strike leaning into her, his eyes locked on hers, dark and intensely focused, his arms strong and firm, braced against the wall behind her, caging her in, his stubble scraping against the skin of her neck…

Robin sat up with a start, pressing her hands against her burning cheeks. What was she  _ thinking _ ? She had broken off her engagement only two days before, she was not about to go and— _ seduce _ her boss in a cheap Travelodge. In any case, she had  _ never _ thought of Strike that way, she told herself firmly. She found it convenient to forget the shiver that she had felt crawling over her skin when he’d kissed her hand on that dark and snowy night, to ignore the warmth that had pooled between her legs just moments ago at the thought of his lips on her throat, feeling her pulse. She got up briskly, started to rummage through her holdall to find her nightgown.

And even if she had had the stray thought of what it might be like, it was hardly her fault. She had never been with any man other than Matthew. She worked closely with Strike, was friends with him. It was understandable that she might occasionally be curious. 

Besides, it didn’t matter. He’d made his opinion towards soulmates and the wound-flowers quite clear, and after all, she thought, considering what he’d confided to her that evening about his mother and Whittaker, how could she blame him? She couldn’t possibly broach the subject with him, not after that, she thought as she crawled between the cool sheets. 

If he hadn’t said anything by now...well, then, it was a clear signal that he did not want anything more from her than they already had. Which was exactly what she wanted, what she had always wanted. Even though she had left Matthew and was now single for the first time in her adult life—and she felt her heart ache at the thought of all the years she had lost, tainted now in her memory by the knowledge of what Matthew had done—she knew that nothing could happen between her and Strike. Their work was too important. The connection that they shared—their partnership—their  _ friendship _ —was too vital to her to risk. 

Robin closed her eyes and turned onto her side, pressing her face into the cool pillow. She wouldn’t speak up and jeopardize the only thing she had left, not for anything.


	11. the flowers danced, knowing that they will die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my writing buddy and support person [Blue_Robin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Robin/pseuds/Blue_Robin), whose suggestions made this chapter much better. I know it took forever, and I am sorry! Forgive me <3
> 
> Chapter title is from The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

_April, 2011: Part 2_

Robin supposed that opening a card containing a severed, rotting toe, barely three weeks after taking receipt of a dismembered leg, would give anyone a moment of fright. But allowing Strike to see that moment of fear, of weakness, was a mistake that Robin regretted almost immediately. 

In the aftermath of the agency receiving its second body part, after the police had come and gone, after Robin had regained her composure, Strike had insisted that she take the following week off to spend with her mother, who’d come to London to offer comfort and support in the wake of Robin taking off her ring. She would not come back to work until Linda was back in Yorkshire, he had decreed, and despite her arguing vociferously against taking time off, he had remained immovable. Tired and frightened and emotional as she was, she had eventually given in, agreed that she would be in the office the following Thursday, and allowed him to see her onto the tube.

It had taken only two days of being trapped inside her tiny flat with her mother and Matthew for Robin to regret her capitulation and become desperate for an escape. Two full days of awkward silences, of constantly being watched by one or the other of them, of heated conversations, conducted in whispers, that cut off abruptly the moment she entered the room. The anger and guilt and fear and exhaustion had simmered until the air was thick with it and Robin thought she might scream.

And then, like a miracle, escape had presented itself.

Early on Sunday evening, she had taken her laptop and hidden away in the bedroom. The agency was down to only three paying cases, now; if Robin was trapped at home, then at least she could attempt to make progress on the trickiest of them. The search for a desperate woman’s soulmate, which she had convinced Strike to let her take on, was proving to be much more difficult than she’d anticipated. 

She had been stymied when the slim list of possibilities that she had assembled had all been ruled out upon further investigation. All had replied to her inquiry, and none of their injuries had matched the history their client, Elena, had recorded so clearly. Robin tapped through the list of men once more, looking for something she might have missed, their pictures flicking by: young, middle-aged, dark, pale, their faces blurring together into an indistinguishable mass.

And then, on her second pass through, she sat up abruptly as a thought occurred to her, a possibility that she had never explored. Staring at the wall, she tried to puzzle the thought out, breathless at her own blindness. With a few clicks of the mouse, she ran her searches again, changing just one parameter—and there she was. 

Claire Howard. A bit younger than Robin had predicted, but not outside the lower bound. The time and date of the telling accident were a perfect fit, the strongest yet. Her heart beating hard and fast in her chest, Robin looked the woman up in directory enquiries and quickly found her, living with a husband and two children in Wiltshire.

Her fingers flying over the keyboard, Robin sent off an email introducing herself and requesting a meeting; then, she began the painstaking process of collecting and cross-referencing traces of the woman from the corners of the internet. It was hours before Robin crawled into bed, exhausted but satisfied, and for the first time in weeks she slid easily into a deep, dreamless sleep.

She woke the next morning to the sun streaming through her window and the sound of the kettle whistling in the kitchen. Without getting out of bed, she pulled her laptop over from where she had set it on the bedside table, tapping her fingers impatiently as it booted up, eager to see Claire’s response to her request. Finally, she opened her email to find…nothing. Frowning, Robin refreshed the page. Still nothing.

She sighed and leaned back against the headboard. It was still early, she supposed. Perhaps Claire had not yet seen the email. Or perhaps she had seen it, and had decided not to respond, just as she hadn’t responded to Elena’s skin-scratched messages.

With a sinking heart, Robin resigned herself to a day spent on tenterhooks, sitting in front of her laptop waiting for an email that might never come. Unless…

A quick visit to Google Maps told her that the village of Ramsbury was only an hour and a half’s drive away. Robin closed her laptop as she calculated, a plan coming together rapidly in her mind. She could leave now and be back by tea time. She would tell Linda that something had come up and she needed to drive Strike to an interview, a story that would stop her mother fussing about Robin going out alone when there was a killer on the loose.

Robin was all too aware that she was likely embarking on a wild goose chase. She knew, too, that Strike would not like the fact that she hadn’t called to brief him, and that he would like her driving off on her own even less. The woman she sought might not be at home, and if she was, Robin could very well receive an unpleasant welcome when she arrived—Claire might not want anything to do with her, or with her soulmate. 

Nevertheless, Robin’s heart lightened at the thought of getting in the Land Rover and driving off on her own, away from the cramped and stifling flat that had begun, in the past week, to feel more like a prison than a home.

Half an hour later, dressed in jeans and trainers and with a thermos of tea in the passenger seat, Robin waved goodbye to her mother, and accompanied by the old familiar rattle of the Land Rover, she pulled out of the drive and set off for Wiltshire.

The drive passed quickly, though Robin could not help feeling that something was missing. _No_ , she corrected herself grimly, _not something. Someone_. And she knew very well who it was she wished were sitting next to her, pouring her tea and speculating about what they would find at the end of the journey. She pushed the thought away and concentrated on the road.

Ramsbury was a quiet, leafy village. Robin drove up the high street and through the village's back lanes, past tightly packed red brick houses and crumbling garden walls, following her phone's GPS instructions until she pulled slowly up to the house she was looking for. It was at the end of a row of houses, sturdy and squat in that local red brick; the front door and garage were painted bright blue, and in the front garden a woman was on her knees, weeding a flower bed, her face hidden from view by a floppy broad-brimmed hat.

Robin parked on the street and climbed out of the Land Rover, slamming the door with its tricky latch behind her and looking both ways before she jogged across the street. As Robin drew closer, she saw that the woman was not alone—a little girl was sitting on the grass beside her, absorbed in a brightly coloured playset, little plastic figures and blocks scattered around her.

“Can I help you?” the woman said, frowning and getting to her feet as Robin stepped up over the kerb onto the lawn. 

“Are you Claire Howard?” 

At the woman’s cautious nod, Robin launched into the speech she had prepared on the way over. “I’m Robin Ellacott,” she began, “I’m sorry for dropping in like this, I don’t know if you saw my email—”

But at the sound of her name, Claire’s eyes had widened and she’d taken a step back, shaking her head. “No,” she said, her voice pitched high and frantic. “No, you can’t, it’s—” her eyes darted to the little girl on the grass, who had looked up at her mother’s obvious distress. With a visible effort, Claire lowered her voice. “You have to tell him you couldn’t find me,” she said. “I’m not going to leave my husband, it’s not possible—”

But Robin had held up her hands in what she hoped was a calming gesture. “You don’t need to worry,” she said, “I’d just like to ask you a few questions.” 

Claire had picked up her daughter, balancing the girl on her hip. She was tense, poised for flight; taking a chance, Robin added, “I was hired to find you by a woman. Her name is Elena.”

“What?” Claire blanched, taking a step back.

“Elena,” Robin repeated. “She’s been looking for—” Robin hesitated. The little girl was staring at her, clinging to her mother’s shirt. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

\--

With some reluctance on Claire’s part, Robin had been invited in—although she suspected that this had more to do with wanting to evade the attention of curious neighbours than a genuine desire to talk. The front hall, though cramped, was spotlessly clean and tastefully decorated; Robin noted the strategic placement of mirrors to give the illusion of a bigger space. Claire, still holding her daughter, nodded unsmiling towards the back of the house.

“Kitchen’s through there,” she said. “Just let me get her settled.” With that, Claire disappeared through the sliding door to the left, and Robin, after hesitating for just a moment, proceeded in the direction she had indicated.

The kitchen was spacious and sunny, decorated in pale yellows and blues, with a large glass sliding door leading to the garden. A heavy scrubbed wooden table dominated the space. Robin established herself in one of the farmhouse chairs, arranging the folder full of papers that she’d brought in front of her.

It took only a moment for Claire to rejoin her; she seemed flustered and uneasy, heading first to the sink and filling a bright copper kettle, which she set on the stove before turning to face Robin. From the other room, Robin could hear the sound of a popular children’s music programme.

Claire, catching the flicker of Robin’s attention towards the other room, said, “She doesn't usually get screen time this early in the day. But..." She trailed off and shrugged helplessly. She had taken off her floppy gardening hat; her thick chestnut hair was tied in a plait down her back, but several curls had escaped to frame her face, which was heavily freckled. Her shoulders lifted as she inhaled deeply before she set them back and squared her chin, as though to brace herself against what Robin had come to tell her.

“Would you like tea?” she asked, somewhat belatedly given the kettle coming to a boil behind her.

“Thank you, yes,” Robin said politely. 

Claire remained silent as she prepared two mugs of tea, and Robin judged it best to allow the silence to lengthen, accepting her mug with a nod. Finally, Claire was seated across from her, what looked like a large hand-thrown mug cradled in her hands. Robin sipped her own tea, waiting for Claire to break the silence.

“How did you find me?” She said finally, looking not at Robin but at the surface of her tea, as if she might find answers there.

"Well, I am a detective," Robin smiled kindly. "It's kind of my job." 

Claire shot her a tight, humorless smile. Robin continued, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go over a few details. Just to confirm that you’re the person I’m looking for.”

“Alright,” Claire said heavily, putting her mug down on the table. “Go ahead.”

“You were in a car accident when you were younger, correct? In January of 2000?” Robin did not need to look at her notes to recall the date, but glanced down anyways while she waited.

“Yes.” The answer was simple, direct; but after a moment, seeming to need to fill the silence, Claire continued, “I was just 21. We’d only been married a month. We were on the way home from my mother’s, and there was a drunk driver…”

She trailed off, her eyes unfocused. Robin took another sip from her mug, waiting a beat before she asked, “What time was the accident, if you can remember?” 

“It was just before nine. We were trying to get home in time for Top Gear.”

Robin nodded. She had already gathered this information from the news articles, but felt a familiar spark of excitement at the verbal confirmation. She rifled through the folder full of papers, extracting one and sliding it across the table towards Claire.

“Does this pattern of wounds look familiar?”

Claire picked up the paper, her eyes widening as she scanned the neatly typed list of flowers. Her voice and hands shook as she answered, “I had a concussion. Bruises all over my chest, from the seat belt,” she made a vague gesture with one hand across her torso; the other still gripped the paper. “The other car hit my side, I was pinned. My pelvis was cracked, my femur… and I lost—I lost—” Claire’s voice broke, her eyes shining with tears and the pain of memories.

“Can I…” Robin half-stood, hovering over her chair, gesturing towards the kitchen roll; but Claire shook her head vigorously, taking a deep breath.

“They had to do three different surgeries,” she finished, her voice slightly steadier.

“Thank you,” Robin said quietly, reaching for the paper that Claire had seemed to forget she was holding. Claire blinked, then relinquished it, dropping her hands into her lap.

“And these,” Robin said gently, sliding a document of Elena’s attempts to message her soulmate over to Claire, “have you seen any of these injuries appear on yourself?” This time, Claire glanced at the paper for barely a moment, without touching it.

“Yes,” she answered flatly. “All of them.”

“Are you sure?”

Claire nodded, sliding the list back to Robin, one finger touching the paper as if she might catch something from it. “I knew that he was,” she paused, then corrected herself, some undefinable emotion flickering across her face, “ _she_ was trying to find me, but...” a longer pause this time, as Claire stared into the garden before looking back to meet Robin’s eyes, saying firmly, “My husband is a good man. I have a good life, you know?”

“I know,” Robin said, but she wasn’t sure that Claire had heard her. The woman was looking out into the garden again, at the riotous flowerbeds and the songbirds splashing in the green-streaked brass bird bath placed in the midst of a tangle of ferns. Abruptly, Claire jerked herself away from the window and blurted out, “Are you going to tell her where I am? How to find me?”

“Not if you don’t want me to,” Robin assured her. “It’s entirely up to you, how we proceed. Elena agreed to that, before I took the case on.”

Claire nodded, chewing on her lip.

“Can you tell me about her?” she asked after a moment, hesitant; but there was a glint of yearning in her eyes that struck a chord of recognition somewhere deep inside of Robin.

So Robin told Claire about her soulmate, or at least as much as she thought professional confidentiality and client privileges would allow her. She related the bare bones of the life story that Elena had regaled her with on the lengthy initial phone call; her childhood in Estonia, her tumultuous home life; her move to London for school because of the appearance of British flowers on her skin; her job as a graphic designer, her passion for art, her upcoming West End gallery exhibition that she had spoken of in ardent tones.

As Robin spoke, she saw a small smile tug at the corners of Claire’s mouth; when she had finished, the woman seemed to take a moment to digest what she had just heard.

“Goodness,” she murmured, finally. “She sounds so interesting.”

Robin, unsure of what to say, remained silent. She had not expressed to Claire the sense of desperation she’d felt over the phone as Elena spoke, had not shared the woman’s confessions about a string of romantic relationships that, as she put it “just weren’t right, because none of them were _him_ ”, had not given voice to her own fear that Elena might be pushed to extremities by her keen longing for the person whose soul was tied to her own.

“I always assumed that it would be…” Claire trailed off, but her faint blush, and the awkward flick of her eyes to meet Robin’s told her exactly what she’d thought, what she’d imagined, and it was the same thing that Robin had occasionally imagined, as a girl; a handsome, charming man who met her eyes across a crowded room, who swept her off her feet for a fairytale ending. An image of Matthew, face screwed up and red with fury, flashed across Robin’s mind. She took another sip of her tea, hot and cleansing.

“But there are soulmates who aren’t romantic, right? I mean, it is possible?” Claire was leaning forward now, eager, earnest.

“Of course it’s possible,” Robin assured. After a moment’s hesitation, she continued, “I know-I mean. It’s more than possible.” She hoped that Claire wouldn’t seize upon that moment of vulnerability, wouldn’t ask how Robin knew—and how could she explain? Just as she’d thought of Matthew a moment ago, Cormoran’s battered face swam into the forefront of her mind, a flash of her silly fantasy in a lonely Barrow Travelodge, the imagined feeling of stubble against the skin of her neck….

A sudden shriek came from the next room, over the sound of the jangling music that Robin had tuned out, startling her from her brief reverie. Claire’s daughter was crying for her mother; Claire jumped up.

“She’ll be wanting her tea,” the woman said, starting towards the sitting room. At the door, she paused, looking back at Robin. “I need to talk to my husband, before I decide anything.”

“That’s fine,” Robin assured her hastily, getting to her feet. “I’ll leave my card. Take as much time as you need.”

Robin didn’t dawdle as she took her leave from a flustered Claire and a screaming child; with a brief word of thanks, she showed herself out the front door and back into the Land Rover for the pensive drive home.

It took less time than Robin thought it would to hear back from Claire; that very night, as Robin was sitting tensely between her mother and her fiancé–ex-fiancé, she reminded herself–her phone pinged the receipt of an email. The message was brief and to the point; if Robin would be so kind, she could pass on Claire’s mobile number to Elena, along with the message that Claire would be happy to speak to her soulmate.

Robin read the message twice, under the watchful eyes of Matthew and Linda; then, deciding that nothing could be done until the following day, placed her phone face-down and pretended to focus on Countdown. 

The following morning, Robin called their client from the café down the street. Speaking over the early-morning din of shouted orders and the chatter of coffee drinkers, she shared what she had discovered with Elena, giving her the briefest outline of her soulmate’s biography and the all-important mobile number.

Elena was struck silent by the revelation of her soulmate’s identity; clearly flummoxed, she had floundered for responses to Robin’s matter-of-fact descriptions. But by the end of the call, she had seemed to recover herself, and hung up with words of gratitude and admiration for Robin’s cleverness.

The call ended, Robin nursed her coffee, staring without seeing at the other patrons of the café. Upon reflection, she found a slight uneasiness twined through her quiet satisfaction at a tricky job completed. There was no cause for it, not that she could find; she had just solved a difficult case, all on her own, and not only that, but she had brought two people together rather than helping them part. The agency’s bank balance would be looking much healthier as soon as Elena paid her final invoice. She imagined telling Strike what she’d accomplished when she returned to the office on Thursday morning, and felt her spirits lift. Perhaps she would take a walk before heading home, she mused. She still had some time before she and Linda had planned on leaving for their afternoon of window shopping. It would be perfectly safe as long as she stuck to populated streets; if the man who sent the leg was stalking her, as Strike suspected, he would hardly attack her in broad daylight along the busy high street.

\--

Robin, buoyed still by the resolution of her search for Elena’s soulmate, had at first enjoyed the planned outing with her mother. Strolling in the sunlight with Linda, looking through windows at the beautiful designer handbags and shoes that she could never afford, Robin had begun to feel truly cheerful for the first time in weeks. 

Still, eventually the pleasure had begun to pall. The crowds of tourists had thickened, the displays had begun to blur together and she had suddenly been unable to stop thinking about Matthew, about how much he craved the status and wealth embodied in the objects surrounding her. She had accepted Linda’s suggestion that they stop for a late lunch with relief. Her mother had insisted on treating Robin, leading her firmly to The Terrace, where they had been seated at a table for two in the large and airy dining room next to the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Piccadilly.

Nothing on the menu had appealed to Robin, but aware of her mother’s anxious gaze resting on her face, she had ordered a salad at random and, as the waiter collected their menus, fell to thinking about what Strike would say when she told him what she had done that morning. She had been dwelling on her suspicion—which had been wearing on her high spirits—that he would not be happy with the fact that she’d gone off alone, and without telling him, and never mind the fact that she was safer in the Land Rover driving out to Wiltshire then almost anywhere out and about in London. The Shacklewell Ripper, whoever he was, could not have followed her there, which Strike should bloody well know. 

Her mother, she realized with a start, had been speaking to her.

“Sorry,” she said guiltily, “what was that?”

“I said, maybe you should think about taking a little break and coming down to Masham for a bit,” Linda repeated, but Robin began shaking her head before her mother had finished the sentence.

“No. No, I’m staying in London.”

“But listen, Robin, it would give you some time and space. To think about what you want to do—to make a decision.”

“What is there to think about?” Robin said, suddenly angry. “I’ve made my decision. I made it when I found out he’d been _cheating_ on me.”

“But you haven’t talked it over with him yet, have you,” Linda continued on stolidly. “You haven’t made it final, and there must be some reason.”

Robin said nothing. The waiter had placed a basket of bread on the table; she tore a piece off of a roll and ate it unenthusiastically. Linda watched Robin eat in silence.

“I’m just tired,” Robin said finally. “I’m so tired.”

“So come home,” Linda repeated eagerly, leaning forward, placing her hand over her daughter’s. “Come and have a rest.”

“I’ve got work,” Robin said, unconvincingly given that Linda was perfectly aware Strike had sent her home after the arrival of the toe. Linda sat back and pressed her lips together as the waiter placed their meals - Robin’s unappetizing kale salad and Linda’s club sandwich - in front of them. 

Linda waited until Robin had taken a bite and was chewing before she said, “Is there another reason you want to stay in London?”

Robin, her fork hovering above her plate, stared at her mother. “What d’you mean, another reason?”

“I mean…” Linda said, hesitating only slightly, “I was reading, in the papers, about your boss. Cormoran.”

“Excuse me?” Robin said, aghast.

“You know what I’m talking about, Robin,” Linda said levelly, dropping any pretense that this wasn’t an interrogation, her gaze holding her daughter’s, and Robin did know what she was talking about, what she was insinuating, and the fact of it infuriated her.

“I know you’ve been talking to Matthew, is what I know,” Robin snapped, dropping her fork. “And he’s my partner. Not my boss. Not anymore.”

Linda sighed, and picked up her sandwich. 

They ate in silence, Robin fuming with anger that her mother had conspired, as she saw it, with Matthew, letting him drip the poison of his suspicions in her ear; but her anger ebbed away all too quickly, the familiar guilt rising to replace it. She knew that Linda loved her, wanted the best for her. Robin’s mother had always been on her side. Through everything, she had always been Robin’s most constant confidant and support.

Perhaps, Robin thought, picking dispiritedly around the onions in her salad, she should tell Linda, tell her the whole of it—about Cormoran, about the flowers, about all the feelings and fears she couldn’t see her way through, couldn’t begin to untangle. Linda would be able to advise her properly then, would be able to tell her what she should do, how she should do it.

Robin opened her mouth, took a breath… and then the image of her bedroom in Yorkshire came to her, the wallpaper now a plain eau-de-nil but the ghost of Destiny’s Child still floating in front of her eyes whenever she looked at the walls that had, for a time, been her entire world. If she confided in Linda, if she went to Yorkshire to get the distance that she needed to make a difficult decision… would she ever come back? If the business failed—and they were down to just two clients now, if they did not find the Ripper soon it would surely fail—if Strike had to let her go, or worse, if he wanted her to go… wouldn’t her being away in Yorkshire give him an easy way out, a quiet passing from what they had been to what she had dreaded them becoming?

No. She needed to stay here, in London. She needed to hold on to what she had - the agency, her partnership, her friendship - with a death grip; to hold on to the truth about the wound-flowers even tighter.

“What is it?” Linda said. 

“Nothing,” Robin replied. “Just wondered if you fancied a look at the dessert menu.” 

\--

It was the day of the Royal Wedding, and Robin supposed that if she had to stay home and work, she might as well watch the media circus. So she took her laptop into the sitting room and settled herself on the cheap IKEA sofa, her legs curled under her.

(She remembered picking the sofa out with Matthew, debating the merits of their choice in the giant warehouse of a store, bringing it home and getting into a silly argument about the instructions as they put it together.) 

Matthew, too, had sat down to watch the wedding with a mug of tea. Robin ignored him.

She was fuming, still, about the last conversation she had had with Strike, when she and Linda had dropped in on the office the previous morning on their way to the train station. As she’d predicted, Strike had indeed been angry with her for driving to Wiltshire, and had not relented even when she’d pointed out his illogical reasoning. If anything, this had seemed to make him angrier. His praise on finding Claire—which was really quite an achievement, Robin thought, feeling herself becoming angry all over again—had been grudging, and belated, and barely adequate. He had thrust the list of strip clubs and brothels into her hands, had refused to let her work from the office, had scowled and said nothing when she asked, a bit desperately, when she would come back.

 _You’re only making lists and phone calls_. His words wouldn’t stop ringing in her ears. She felt a tear leak from her eye and brushed it away angrily. It was obvious to her, now, that Strike was pushing her away, that he did not want her near him; obvious, too, that it wasn’t really about safety, or money, or a lack of work. No, it was something much more fundamental, much more painful; he didn’t want her. That was all. Not as a partner, not as—

Robin jerked her thoughts away from Strike, blinking away her tears, focusing on the blurry laptop screen in front of her. She heard a strange choking noise, and glanced up. On the television screen, Kate Middleton was advancing up the aisle towards her prince, resplendent in white lace. Matthew turned his face towards Robin. He was crying, she saw with a jolt. She looked hurriedly back down at her computer.

“Robin…” 

Reluctantly, she looked back up; Matthew’s expression was pleading, broken, his voice hoarse as he said, “Are we really done?”

She looked at his face, tearstained and desperate, and the answer stuck in her throat.

“We were good once, weren’t we?” He asked. “Can’t we find that again?”

They had been good. Once. Robin remembered the excitement she’d felt on the way up the road to meet him for their very first date, the butterflies in her stomach when he’d leaned over to kiss her cheek. She remembered his face, white and terrified and tearful as he’d sat by her bed in the hospital; remembered his hand warm and steady in hers, remembered the hours-long phone calls and how patient he’d been, how sweet and how safe. _And fucking Sarah Shadlock the whole time_ , she thought, but the pain and fury of that thought was muted, as if it was coming from a great distance away, pushing its way through a flood of pain and heartbreak and bittersweet memories.

She had been silent for too long. She cleared her throat. “Matt…”

And then Matthew was there, suddenly, kneeling beside her, holding her hand in his, warm and solid, his hazel eyes locked on her face.

“I chose you, Robin,” he said, earnestly. “I love you. I’ll always choose you.”

Robin said nothing. The flicker of anger burning in her chest had not yet been extinguished; but it was wavering, losing its strength. Exhaustion, fear, the strength of nine years of love and shared life were smothering it, weighing on her chest, making each breath she drew a struggle.

“If we choose each other…” Matthew paused. Robin had not taken her hand back; he stroked his thumb across the back of her finger where the sapphire ring had sat for so long. “We can make it work, Robin. I know we can.” 

Robin closed her eyes against the tears, but she could feel them spill down her cheeks regardless. Unbidden, she saw an image of Strike’s face, dark and scowling. She banished it, opening her eyes to the sight of Matthew’s handsome face, wanting her, begging her to come back to him.

“Matt,” she said again, and this time her voice, too, was cracking, and she could hear the surrender in it, and saw the smile spread across his face.

\--

But as she stood in the office on Monday morning, bracing herself for the argument she knew was coming, she saw Strike’s eyes find her the sapphire ring, back in its place on her left hand. Some emotion she couldn’t quite identify— Anger? Hurt? Grief?—flashed across his face, and at the sight of it her stomach sank. 

It was there for just a moment; when he turned back to her, it was gone, his expression set in its familiar surly lines. But as they argued, as he conceded her points without grace, as she forced her way back into their business at least, if not any other part of what she’d thought they had come to share, some small, panicked part of her, that pit that had opened up in the bottom of her stomach, was wondering if maybe she had gotten it all wrong.


	12. truth requires thorns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go to [BlueRobinWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRobinWrites/pseuds/BlueRobinWrites/works?fandom_id=6726952), for unwavering support, encouragement, suggestions and beta work (without which, I guarantee, words would _not_ get written). 
> 
> Thank you to Bethany, a wonderful beta who always manages to find a million ways to make my words sound so much better!
> 
> Chapter title from The Language of Thorns, by Leigh Bardugo.

_June, 2011_

Cormoran hadn't bothered to turn on the overhead lights. The shadows on the office walls danced, the small pool of light from his desk lamp serving his needs as he sat, staring at nothing, and drinking in a determined, mechanical way. The beer - was it his fourth, or fifth? He was not entirely sure, and didn't care enough to check - had not yet washed away the aftermath of the evening, the terror, the adrenaline, the shame, the anger. If he closed his eyes, he could still see Robin's face under the harsh light of the hospital fluorescents, white and washed out beneath the splatters of red ink. He could still hear the scuffle of trainers and the distant blare of her rape alarm, tinny and distant over the phone pressed to his ear.

He drank.

His right arm rested on the table next to him; his eyes kept straying to it as he drank, lingering on the wrinkled blue cotton that covered the skin. He was unsure of how many beers it would take before he could bring himself to roll up his sleeve. He finished his can, crushed it clumsily in his left hand and winged it across the room, where it just missed landing in the bin.

He had come face to face with Matthew, for the very first time, as he left the hospital. They had never met, not properly, but Matthew clearly recognized him. The accountant's eyes had narrowed and the loathing that flooded his handsome face had made Strike, usually unflappable, take half a step back.

"What's happened to her?" The accountant had demanded, and Strike, furious with Carver and with himself, had responded with a terse description of the attack. But before he could finish, Matthew had interrupted him.

“Which arm?” 

Strike, brought up short, had not responded quickly enough for the accountant’s liking.

“Which. Arm,” Matthew had repeated, stepping into Strike, his fists balling up at his sides.

“Her right. Why-?” Like a snake striking, the man’s hand had shot out and he had grabbed Strike by the forearm, gripping him tightly, and at the same moment—

“ _Matt!_ ” 

At the sound of Robin’s voice, both men had looked around. She was standing there, in the door of her room, her bandaged arm cradled against her chest, her face pinched in pain and anger. Matthew had frozen, hanging on to Strike’s arm; and then he had dropped it and stepped away, towards his fiancée, the anger and hatred draining away as he moved, his lips beginning to form words of fear, of concern.

Strike had not lingered. He had turned his back on the couple, on the pleading glance that Robin had thrown over her shoulder as the doctor led her away to x-ray, had limped home—with a brief stop at the off-license—in a fog of self-loathing, anger, and dread, white-hot pain shooting up his thigh with every step.

His need for another drink was outweighing the exhaustion and pain that made movement a misery. Strike heaved himself up out of his chair and hobbled out of the inner office to the kitchenette, supporting himself on walls and filing cabinets as he went. He grabbed two more cans from where he’d stuffed them in the office’s mini-fridge—the last two of the six pack, he noticed, so that was four down, then—and made his way back, cracking one of them open almost before he'd dropped back into his seat. 

Robin had flinched, when he’d pulled aside the curtain to her bed, his leg screaming and his heart in his throat. Flinched, and tried to hide her arm, nearly yanking it out of the young doctor's hand, and Cormoran had seen the panic in her eyes before she looked away, apologizing to the doctor as he chided her. She had barely met his gaze as they had talked, as she’d explained her self-defense courses and recalled what she could of the attack. When her eyes _did_ meet his, he had seen the apprehension and fear in them, and had known that it was not lingering adrenaline from the attack that was making her look at him that way, and he had felt his stomach clench and twist. 

The empty building creaked and settled around him, the muffled noise of the traffic rumbling past outside the window seeming to intensify the silence in the office broken only by the sound of his own breathing. He would have to get on with it, he knew. This moment of suspended time, a moment stretching into hours in which he could sit, in the solitude and quiet of the shadowy office, sequestered from the world outside in a pool of weak and flickering lamplight—it could not last. Time and space would soon resume their usual functions—when the beer ran out, if nothing else—and he would have to move along with them.

With sudden, drunken determination, he set down his can and pushed the sleeve of his shirt up over his elbow. There, under the thick black hair and rippling over the flexing muscles of his forearm, just where he had known they would be—known when Matthew had seized his arm, known when Robin had avoided his gaze, known when he had heard her gasp and the scuffle of her sneakers over the phone and the terror had swamped him, setting every nerve of his body on fire for fear of losing her—were the wound-flowers. A neat, thin line of blood-red roses. With a sense of leaden resignation, he picked up his can of beer and gave a grim toast to the flowers before finishing it in a single go, wiping the foam off his lips, and reaching for the last.

This one he sipped, slowly, contemplating the curves and whorls of the clustered petals. If he was being honest with himself—and he felt that tonight, of all nights, he should, for once, be honest with himself —he had already known, in some deep part of him, that it was Robin. 

As she had told him about the rape, sitting in the Tottenham, her gaze sliding away from his, he had felt it: the sickening sensation of his feet sliding out from under him, a concussive blast like a gut punch rendering what he thought was solid ground into shifting sand. One breathless moment of vertigo, and then the world had rearranged itself, and he was flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him, staring up at the sky. 

In that moment, he had _known_. 

His rationalizations, and hesitations, and the careful collection of trace evidence to pick apart and study when the proof was within arm’s reach, all of it had been nothing more than a desperate attempt to fucking fool himself.

Why, he wondered, as he lit a new cigarette from the butt of the old one and took a swig of rapidly-warming beer, had he not wanted to believe it? Why had he looked away, ignored his instincts, denied and evaded the truth of it, when his whole life had been spent in pursuit of hard truths?

He could tell himself the easy answers, the ones he’d been telling himself his whole life. That he didn’t want a soulmate, didn’t need one; that the universe was a flawed and broken place, and that the wound-flowers were a physical manifestation of that brokenness, and that to believe in fate, in a plan, in the location of one’s destiny in another person, was to set oneself up for nothing but disappointment and pain.

He didn’t need a soulmate. He had a partner, a good one, and it had been simple and straightforward and uncomplicated, until the universe had decided, once more, to fuck with him.

He had finished the last of the beer. There was a half-full bottle of whisky in his flat, and if he was going to get drunk, he thought, dropping the glowing butt of his cigarette into the empty can and heaving himself up out of his chair, he might as well do it properly. The final two beers had successfully numbed the worst of his pain, although they had not made walking any easier. Swaying, stumbling, and cursing, he made his way to the landing, dropping his keys three times before he managed to lock the office door behind him and begin the laborious ascent to his attic flat.

Strike was sweating by the time he reached his front door, which he rarely locked given the secured street entrance and the fact that he had very little worth stealing. He made his way to the bedroom, where he divested himself of his dress shirt, trousers, and prosthesis before lying back against his pillows. The ashtray, bottle of whisky, and chipped tumbler that he’d collected on the way he placed within easy reach on the box that served as his bedside table.

He drank steadily, methodically, working his way down the bottle of whisky as though he might find a way forward at the bottom of it, chain-smoking as he went, lighting each cigarette with the embers of its predecessor.

He was brooding, against his better judgement, on the image of Robin in that hospital bed: on her pale face and her tangled hair, on her blue-grey eyes swollen from the splatters of red dye, on the glimpse he’d caught of the jagged wound on her arm. But now, as the whisky blurred his vision it seemed to blur his memories too, so that Robin as he’d seen her that evening shifted and melted, and the ink on her face and neck became violent purple bruises, and the brightly lit hospital room became a dark stairwell and he was hearing her scream, hearing again the distant blare of the rape alarm and feeling completely useless, helpless. And then he was watching the flowers bloom once more across his mother’s cheekbone, and he cursed himself as he poured more whisky, sloshing some over the side of the glass to stain the box underneath.

He had thought nothing could be worse than that long night’s vigil in Germany, but he’d been wrong about that too, because this time, he knew that it was his fault. He had been the one to keep Robin out on the streets against his own better judgement; he was the one who’d put her in that hospital bed almost as surely as if he’d been wielding the knife himself.

This time, he knew exactly what he had to lose, what he’d come so close to losing, and that knowledge was somehow even worse.

 _Robin_.

He had often dwelt, in his more contemplative moods, on how well they got on, on how smoothly Robin had slotted into place as his partner, his friend, as if there had been a Robin-shaped hole in his life that he’d never noticed until it was filled. 

And here, then, was the hard answer, the truth that he had not wanted to face: that it felt right, the notion that Robin was meant for him; that her soul and his were made of the same stuff. It felt right, and real, and true, in a way that very little in his life ever had before. When she had briefly been free, on that trip to Barrow, he had not been able to contemplate the thought for fear of it, from the deep-rooted dread of permanence and obligation that left him ill-equipped and terrified. 

Now, though…the sparkling sapphire had returned to its place on her finger and in less than a month, she would stand in front of friends and family and make her vows to another man. 

Now, it wasn’t fear that was boiling in his stomach and making his whisky-flushed face even hotter.

Strike had finished the whisky in his tumblr, and he desperately needed a piss. He maneuvered himself clumsily off the bed so that he could hop to his tiny, cramped washroom and relieve himself. His head was swimming, his hands unsteady, and he moved carefully as he hopped back to his bedroom, holding on to whatever furniture or wall was in reach to steady himself.

He passed the beaten-up couch without incident, but misjudged the distance of a jump and banged his hip painfully into the corner of the little formica table. Cursing, he tried to catch himself, but he was too slow, too unsteady, and he crashed to the ground, the edge of the table smashing into his cheekbone as he fell.

He lay for a moment, stunned and drunk and in pain, the hard floor cold against his overheated face, and a sudden wave of fury rose up in him, colouring his muttered invectives as he rolled over, levered himself upright with a great deal of help from the cheap metal and plastic kitchen chair, and resumed the slow, painful journey back to his bedroom.

How long had Robin known? 

Why the _fuck_ hadn’t she told told him? 

She had said nothing, given not a single hint that he was anything other than a partner to her. She had gone about helping him build the agency, learning the job, training and shouldering the burdens of surveillance until she had become absolutely indispensable to him—to the agency, and the entire time she had known, and kept it hidden from him, and he had suspected nothing.

He remembered the loathing on Matthew’s face; her fiancé knew as well, then. _Of course he knows_ , Strike thought darkly as he collapsed back onto the mattress. _She’s marrying the twat, of course she’s told him_. She would’ve done it right away, as soon as she’d realized, would have reassured him tenderly that it meant nothing, that she didn’t want a fat, old, one-legged detective, that she was staying for the job and the job alone. 

He was the only one who hadn’t known. He was the one who’d been made a fool out of, who’d gone about his business blissfully oblivious until the secret couldn’t be hidden any longer, until the lies had been flayed away and pulled back to reveal the bloody truth underneath. 

A memory of Charlotte insinuated itself into his meandering stream of fury and resentment: Charlotte, weeping, her tear-stained face beautiful and desperate; Charlotte, pleading, caught in a tangle of muddled dates and impossibilities; Charlotte, spitting and screaming, hurling accusations like ashtrays at his face.

He swung out an arm, slightly haphazardly, to grab the whisky, and succeeded only in knocking it over. The heavy glass bottle hit the floor with a thud, but it was alright, he realized muzzily, because it was empty anyways and at least it hadn’t broken, and he wouldn’t be hopping over jagged shards of glass the next morning.

He still had his pack of Benson & Hedges, at least, though it was rapidly dwindling. He lit another, contemplating the end of his stump where it lay stretched out in front of him on the bed. For the first time in years—the first time since those long nights where he’d lain drugged and sleepless in his hospital bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling himself wiggle toes that he knew were no longer there—he wondered what the wound-flowers had shown her.

Robin.

Had she watched them bloom, when he’d been lying on the hard ground with his ears ringing and the scent of blood and smoke tainting every gasping breath? 

Were there traces of them still there, even now, faded but still visible against skin that was otherwise smooth and pale and soft? He tried to imagine them, to picture the colours and shapes of the irises, or lilies, or hyacinths wrapped around her shin, but he couldn’t quite bring them into focus. He rubbed at his eyes, and hissed at the stab of pain as he brushed his hand against the cheek he’d slammed into the table.

That would bruise in the morning, he thought, and then—Robin would see it, wouldn’t she, see it and wonder what the hell he’d done to himself. 

And then, with a stab of anxiety, a sudden thought came to him—Robin’s doctor had said something about x-raying her ribs, hadn’t he? Strike sat up, his hip aching a little from where he’d banged it, and—after a minute of struggle in which his arms and head became hopelessly entangled—managed to pull off his undershirt to examine his torso. It took him a moment to find them, peering bleary-eyed past the mat of thick black hair, but find them he did: a smattering of sea holly and lilac across his abdomen.

He felt a twinge in his chest at the sight of the sea holly, a sudden strange longing for the home that had never really been home, but pushed it aside to examine the pattern of flowers. It took him longer than it should have to conclude that the damage wasn’t likely to be serious—the patch of flowers was small, and there were no new ones blooming, no indication of further injury.

That was something, at least. He wouldn’t have to add internal bleeding or organ failure to the list of injuries he was responsible for tonight. He laid down again, closing his eyes and pressing his face into the pillow. His head was spinning, his stomach revolting in a fit of nausea, so he raised one hairy arm to grip the bedstead behind him, to remind his uncooperative body that he was on solid ground. His thoughts were disordered, fuzzy, but as he began to slip into the blissful oblivion of the drunken slumber, the image of the sea holly was floating there in front of his eyes, and his last conscious thought was of reaching for it, straining, without being able to grasp quite why. 

\--

It was not until well past noon the next day, as Strike stood swaying and miserable in his bathroom, clenching the porcelain sink and staring at his haggard face in the mirror while he willed himself not to vomit, that the drunken thought of the sea holly came back to him, and sliding along behind it was the realization he had been unable to reach in his drunken stupor. As he stood on his cold bathroom tiles, his stomach churning and his mind racing, he knew with absolute certainty that he had found his way to the identity of the killer who had, slowly but surely, decimated every good thing in Strike’s life.

It took a lengthy hot shower, a dose of painkillers, several hot coffees and their accompanying cigarettes, and the consumption of a greasy takeaway that he’d carried home, limping, before he could bear to turn his thoughts again to Robin.

Five o’clock found him sitting once more at the desk in his office, his headache reduced to a dull throb and the nausea nearly completely receded, on hold once more as he tried to get through to someone who would believe what he told them about the Shacklewell Ripper. While he didn’t think that this strategy would be successful, he felt he had a duty to at least attempt it. 

As he sat there, drumming his fingers against the desk and trying to control his temper at being given the run-around and at Carver’s petty incompetence, his thoughts drifted, again, to Robin. He hadn’t spoken to her since he’d left her at the hospital. She had texted him, early that afternoon, a brief inquiry about some work-related matter that he was sure would have turned into probing questions about what he’d done to his face, if he’d answered it. Which he hadn’t.

He knew that he couldn’t avoid her forever, that he would at some point have to face her, to figure out some way to carry on working together—that was, of course, if the agency didn’t collapse in the wreckage left by the Shacklewell Ripper, an outcome that was looking increasingly likely with each day that passed.

Until he’d found a way to prove his theory, to untangle the complicated web of the killer’s plan and put him behind bars, he would leave Robin exactly where she was: at arm’s length while she recovered, safe and sound at home while she prepared to walk down the aisle.

It would be safer that way. For both of them.


	13. all that blooms must wither

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to BlueRobinWrites for her wonderful advice and beta-reading, and to everyone at the Denmark Street Discord for your love and support. 🥰
> 
> Chapter title from Dahi Tamara Koch - _Within the Event Horizon_
> 
> Portions of this chapter's dialogue are lifted pretty much verbatim from Career of Evil.

_June, 2011_

Cormoran closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. A headache had been growing steadily behind his temples all day, and arguing with Robin over the phone wasn’t helping.

It was the first time they had spoken in days. He had tried to keep his distance, paring down the communication between them to the barest essentials; but he couldn’t duck every call, couldn’t ignore every text. In honesty, he didn’t want to.

It had been more difficult than he’d anticipated, avoiding Robin. Not because of her persistence, though she was dogged in reaching out to him every day; no, it was not Robin causing his struggle. It was himself.

He had known perfectly well that his chosen course of action—to keep Robin at arms length, to maintain a certain distance between them—ran counter to his own inclinations and desires. He liked talking to Robin, liked hearing her voice, liked sharing his thoughts and receiving hers in return. He hadn’t expected to enjoy pushing her away.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the extent of how bloody miserable he’d be making himself, how hard it would be to see her name on his phone and not pick up, the guilt he would feel when he did talk to her and heard the hurt and confusion in her voice.

And so he’d given in, and answered this morning’s call, and now his headache was building along with his frustration at Robin.

“Cormoran, listen. I know we can’t—”

“There’s no ‘we’ just now,” Cormoran said, exasperated. “There’s me, sitting on my arse with no work, and there’s you, staying at home until this killer’s caught.”

“I wasn’t talking about the case,” she said stubbornly. “There’s one thing we—you can do, then. Brockbank might not be the killer, but we know he’s a rapist. You could go to Alyssa and warn her she’s living with—”

“Forget it,” he said harshly. “For the last fucking time, Robin, you can’t save everyone!”

There was a long silence. Strike thought he could hear Robin’s breathing become ragged, and felt a fresh stab of guilt.

“Listen,” he said, “I get why you want—”

“I need to go,” Robin said, and then, “speak soon.” 

She hung up the phone.

_There’s no ‘we’ just now._

The echo of Strike’s words rang in Robin’s ear as she sat on her bed, staring at the wall, her phone held limply in her hand. _There’s no ‘we’, now_. She supposed she should have expected it—she had been expecting it, had felt him pulling away since the night he’d left her in the hospital with a bleeding arm and a petrified heart. She still didn’t know what had caused the clusters of blue anemones she’d seen on her face and hip, when she’d woken up the morning after being attacked, and she thought now that she might never know. An aching sort of hollowness had opened up in her chest over the past week, slowly but surely, growing bigger and emptier with every call that he’d let go to voicemail, with every text that had gone unanswered.

If he had not known that her wounds would blossom on his skin, if he had somehow failed to put the pieces together before, then it had been confirmed that night. She’d seen the knowledge in his face, when she’d dared to meet his eyes. 

She had wondered, over innumerable sleepless nights, how Strike would feel when he discovered that Robin was his soulmate, that the universe he so often derided had given him to her. Well, she knew now.

_There’s no ‘we’ anymore._

Robin’s eyes were dry as she stared into nothing; the tears would come later, she thought, but for now the cold spreading through her had frozen them solid. She’d lost everything—lost her freedom, her ability to do the one thing she knew she was good at, her passion. She had lost him.

She had not realized, until now, just how much she treasured Strike’s friendship, his respect; how much she cared for him, how much she… 

What did it matter, now? He had confirmed all of her worst fears, as good as told her they were over in those four words. 

_There’s no ‘we’ anymore._

It was only a matter of time, now, before Strike severed whatever final threads bound them and she was left alone and adrift.

There was one thing she could do, at least, one thing that she did not need Strike for. He had just forbidden it; but what did it matter? It was clear he was lost to her anyway, and there were two young girls living at the mercy of a violent pedophile, and she was the only one willing to help them.

\--

It took three days of careful preparation for Robin to arrange and execute her plan; and it took three minutes for it all to fall apart, for Brockbank to flee out the splintered front door with Shanker in pursuit, leaving chaos in his wake.

 _They’re safe_ , Robin thought as she sank to sit on the floor, her back against the bare wall. Angel and Zahara were safe, now. She’d known that there would be consequences, and had chosen despite them to do this anyway. The thought was bare comfort as Zahara screamed and Alyssa sobbed and Robin cradled her aching right arm, a stripe of red-hot pain running down the back of it where Brockbank had grabbed her. She’d felt the stitches twist and pop under his hand as he’d yanked her, had screamed in agony and crumpled under the strength of his grip. Only Shanker bursting through the door to threaten the hulking man with a knife had made him release her. She struggled now to fight back tears of pain; she was afraid to pull up her sleeve, certain that she would see the blossoming red of fresh blood spreading on the snow-white bandages.

Shanker had not come back. She couldn’t sit here waiting for him, not with her aching arm now dripping blood. She knew she needed to go to hospital, but she could not leave Alyssa and her daughters here alone, in case Brockbank somehow evaded Shanker and doubled back. She fumbled out her phone.

“Alyssa,” she said, and then when the woman ignored her, cradling her eldest daughter to her chest as she sobbed, a little louder: “Alyssa!” 

“Wha’?” she said, looking up at Robin finally, her eyes red rimmed.

“I’m going to call the police.”

“Oh.” Alyssa blinked, as though the thought of summoning law enforcement was a foreign one to her. “Right,” she said, a bit reluctantly, as Robin dialed 999. 

\--

Strike was sitting on his sofa, legs stretched out in front of him, a plate with the remnants of his stir-fry dinner beside him, when a flash of red caught his eye. 

His forearm was bare; he was wearing a t-shirt in concession to the heat, which was stifling in his attic flat even with all the small windows propped open and the ancient desk fan appropriated from the office downstairs. 

Since that night, he had tried not to look at the roses on his arm, had forced himself to look away every time he’d found himself staring absently at them. But nevertheless, he had noticed, over the past days, that the blossoms had started to curl inwards, the petals withering and fading as the cut on Robin’s arm, on the other side of the city, had started to heal. 

But now, that flash of red; the roses were blooming again, big and bright, unfurling themselves across his skin. There were other blooms as well, he saw, looking closer, that hadn’t been there before: bunches of lavender, spreading perpendicular across the line of roses, a pattern of clustered flowers that looked almost like… fingers, like the grip of a large hand.

His phone was beside him on the armrest of the couch. He picked it up, thumbed through his recent calls. Robin’s name was several rows down, and he realized with a start that it had been several days since they’d spoken. 

She had not called since they’d argued about Brockbank. 

Anxiety gripped him as he pressed the call button under her name, staring at the blossoms on his arm.

\--

Robin was sitting on the side of the hospital bed, waiting for the plastic surgeon who would re-stitch the wound in her arm, when her phone rang. She checked the number before she picked up, worried that it would be Matthew or her mother, whom she had not informed of her whereabouts; but with a chill, she saw Strike’s name on the caller ID. 

She stared, debating whether or not she should pick up. Why was he calling her now? They had not spoken in days, not since he had refused to help Angel and Zahara. 

The ringing stopped; the call had gone to voicemail. Before Robin could decide whether or not to feel relieved, it rang again: Strike. 

Robin braced herself, and answered.

“Hi.” 

Strike felt a rush of relief at the sound of Robin’s voice.

“Robin,” he said, then paused. He had no excuse for calling her, had not thought through what he would say—he couldn’t ask her about the bruises, the flowers, could he? He scrambled for some excuse. “How are you?” he said finally, wincing a little at the casual tone he’d affected, which to his ears sounded obviously forced.

“Fine,” she said, and something about that flat tone convinced him that she wasn’t fine at all. “Was there something you needed?”

Against her own will, Robin pressed the phone tightly to her ear. She could hear him breathing on the other end of the line, and though she was afraid of what his reaction would be when he found out what she’d done, still she could not help the pleasure she felt at hearing his voice, at knowing he was there. She’d missed him; the thought was like a stab to the gut. 

“Not really, just…” The PA system above her blared a code call, and Robin winced, hoping against hope that Strike could not hear it over the phone. She was not in luck; his tone sharpened as he asked, “Where are you?” 

“Nowhere,” she said hastily, knowing that the lie was futile “I’m just—it’s nothing.”

“You’re at a hospital.” Strike was already up off his couch, reaching for his keys and wallet. “What’s happened? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she said again, “Cormoran, don’t—”

“Which hospital? Tell me,” he demanded.

Robin took a deep breath, but before she could answer, the curtain around her bed was yanked open and she saw, to her horror, DI Carver standing there, his face red and twisted in fury.

“Is that Strike?” he shouted, before she could hang up, “Sent you to do his dirty work, eh? Tell him—” But what Carver had wanted her to tell Strike, she did not find out; an irate nurse had appeared by her bedside to usher the officer away, explaining firmly over his shouted protests that he would be permitted to question Robin only after the doctor had seen to her stitches.

Sick with dread, Robin put the phone back to her ear, but said nothing. Strike, too, was silent, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she sat waiting for the axe to fall. Finally, he spoke.

“Robin,” he said, his voice deceptively calm. “What the fuck did you do?”

\--

The crowded tube ride, with its two changes and bus connection followed by a lengthy walk, had done nothing to dissipate Strike’s fury. In fact, it had given him time to brood on what Robin had finally, haltingly confessed over the phone, time in which he could become angrier and angrier until, as he walked limping across the hospital parking lot towards the entrance to A&E, he was struggling to rein in the rage surging under his skin.

Carver had called him, only moments after Strike had hung up on Robin, cutting her off in the middle of a sentence. The man had shouted obscenities in his ear, working himself up to a fever pitch as Strike tried, without success, to interject, to tell the policeman the information he was sure would lead to the Shacklewell Ripper. But Carver had been incensed, and Strike had shouted over him without being heard until finally he’d cut that call as well, partway through Carver screaming incoherent threats in his ear, breathing heavily under the stares of the other passengers on the rattling bus as he shoved the phone in his pocket and glared unseeing at his own reflection in the window.

He felt an unpleasant sense of déjà vu as he asked the nurse at the desk for Robin Ellacott and followed her instructions down the sterile hospital hallways, a sense which increased rather than assuaged his ire. 

He saw her before she saw him. Her white face, washed out under the harsh light of the fluorescents, was pinched and worried; her bandaged right arm was resting in her lap, and her left hand was worrying the edge of the blanket. He stood for a moment, watching her, battling with himself for control over the fire raging in him that had flared up afresh at the sight of her, and the knowledge of what she’d done. A crash from the corridor behind him made Robin start; she looked up, and into his eyes.

Robin had been dreading Strike’s appearance from the moment she’d picked up the phone. As the police had interviewed her, as Carver had jeered and glared and insinuated, a large part of her mind had been imagining the confrontation she knew was coming with a sick kind of anticipation. Still, none of her imaginings had prepared her for the look on Strike’s face as he walked towards her. Fury, rage, she had expected; but his face was blank and cold, his eyes trained on her but nevertheless detached. 

He was looking at her like she was a stranger. She dropped her eyes to avoid the chill in his stare, and a shiver ran through her. 

He was wearing a t-shirt in the warm summer heat; the shock of colour on his right forearm was plainly visible through his thick black arm hair. She had known it to be true, had not needed the confirmation, and yet at the sight of those flowers she felt a thrill, a rush of something like happiness cutting through the misery and dread.

He stopped in front of her, his big feet braced on the linoleum, his fists clenched at his sides. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze, letting her eyes rest on the line of roses and clusters of lavender instead. The silence stretched between them; Robin was determined she would not be the one to break it.

“I told you not to go near Brockbank,” he said finally, his voice as harsh and cold as his eyes.

“Yes.”

“Yet you did it anyway.”

“Yes.” Her tone was flat. He had expected something more from her, some attempt at justification, some foothold he could use to launch into a condemnation of her actions, that would let him give vent to his fury—but it was just that flat, resigned tone. She wouldn’t even look at him.

“You’ve driven my business off the edge of a cliff,” he said, furious, pushing her, needling her. “Carver thinks I sent you. He’ll string me up for this.”

“Just say it.” The tears were rolling down her cheeks now, hot against her skin. She swiped ineffectually at them with her good left hand as she waited. “Just say what you came here to say.”

For a moment, there was silence, and Robin clung to the final wisp of hope in her heart, hope that she was wrong, that he wouldn't do what she'd dreaded him doing.

“We’re finished,” he said, finally. Robin had known it was coming, had feared it for so long; but the words were nonetheless like a physical blow, driving the air from her lungs

“I’ll send your final pay on,” he continued. “Quick and clean. Gross misconduct.”

Robin choked a bitter laugh through her tears. “At least have the decency to admit the real reason.”

“Excuse me?” Strike was utterly thrown; this was not how he had expected this confrontation to unfold, not how he had expected Robin to react. He’d been prepared for her arguments, prepared to cut every one of them down with icy precision. He had not been prepared for _this_ , whatever _this_ was.

“This isn’t because of Brockbank. You wouldn’t fire me for that,” she said, and the conviction in her voice stoked Strike’s anger anew. “Not for saving those girls.”

“The hell I wouldn’t,” he growled at her. How dare she—to suggest that he was—ridiculous. “He’s gone underground—they’ve found the church connection—”

But Robin was shaking her head. “No,” she said, and finally she was looking up at him, her face white and tear-stained and grief-stricken. “This is because I’m—because _we’re_ —”

“We're what?” he interrupted, his voice low and menacing as he stepped in closer, his fists clenched. He glared down at her, and Robin blanched at the fury in his gaze.

“You know what,” she said, her voice wavering a little; but she didn’t look away, held his gaze as he stared at her. She wanted him to say it, wanted to hear it. 

“We’re nothing,” he said flatly, stepping back. “You’ve seen to that.”

Robin recoiled as though she’d been slapped. “You don’t mean that,” she whispered. “You can’t.”

They stared at each other for a long, silent moment. Then Strike stepped back, shaking his head but saying nothing; stepped away, and turned to leave. Robin inhaled a shuddering breath through the tears that she had stopped trying to control.

“Cormoran, please—” she knew it was futile, knew that nothing would change his mind, had resolved that at least she would keep her dignity, if nothing else; but at the sight of him turning away she could not stop herself from reaching out towards his right arm, to that splash of vibrant colour. He jerked it away, as if her touch were a white-hot brand, and without another word he turned his broad back to her, and walked away.


	14. love speaks in flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to BlueRobinWrites for the wonderful validation and beta reading, and thanks to all of you for your patience! Hopefully the next chapter won't take quite so long...
> 
> Chapter Title from The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo.

_Thursday 30th June 2011_

Robin awoke, gasping, clawing at her throat; beside her, Matthew turned over in his sleep, his breathing steady and slow. She could still feel the thick fingers wrapped around her throat, could still see the dream Strike out of the corner of her eye, watching silently, doing nothing. When her racing heart had slowed and she was able to breathe again, she slipped out of bed, moving carefully and quietly. She didn’t turn on the light in the washroom, but sank down against the wall to sit on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, shaking a little still from the tremors of the nightmare. 

She rested her forehead against her knees, breathing slowly, trying to calm herself. Her left thumb moved slowly and rhythmically, stroking the white roses that wrapped around her calf through the soft cotton of her pyjamas. It was a habit, one that had soothed her in the past, but now Strike’s face swam before her eyes again, his face cold, his eyes hard and glittering, and she had to squeeze her eyelids shut tightly against the tears that threatened. 

The mysterious anemones on her hip and cheek had faded days ago, and the roses were all she had left of him, now. Her eyes were burning, and she gave up, letting the tears flow silently to soak the knees of her pyjama bottoms . It was the first time she’d cried in days, since she had watched Strike walk away from her, sitting on a hospital bed unable to stop the tears from sliding down her face as the doctor double-checked her stitches and the nurses exchanged worried glances. She’d cried, after they were done with her, leaning against the stall wall in the sterile ladies washroom, cried until there was nothing left inside her but a dull ache where her heart should have been.

And then she’d dried her eyes, cleaned off her streaked makeup with a damp paper towel, walked out of the hospital and taken a taxi home.

She had had no choice but to tell Matthew and her mother what had transpired, and this she did in a flat tone, sparing no details—well, almost no details. The crimson stripe of flowers on Strike’s arm, she had kept to herself, just as she did the dawning knowledge that when he had walked away, he’d ripped her heart out of her chest and taken it with him.

She had borne Matthew’s fury at her actions, and her mother’s worry, and their united relief, poorly concealed, at the end of her association with Strike, with the same dull acceptance on all counts. Linda had gone home to Masham soon after, drawn away by last minute wedding preparations. 

Matthew was all concern and indignation on her behalf; but she could feel his smug satisfaction, and then as time wore on, his anger—anger that she could not seem to muster a smile, let alone pretend excitement for a wedding that, at this moment, felt less like a pleasure and more like a penance.

The days passed, for Robin, in a haze of numbness and misery. Nothing around her seemed quite real, not as real as the memory of the roses on Strike’s arm and the sound of his voice, harsh and cold, as he told her they were nothing. It sometimes seemed to her that the passage of time had slowed to a crawl; and then, sometimes, the hours slipped away without her even noticing their passing. 

She rolled her head to the side, to look at the sky through the tiny bathroom window. It was beginning to lighten. Matthew would be awake soon. They were meant to be leaving for the drive up to Masham this morning, and she had not yet finished packing her suitcases. She would have to dredge up the last reserves of her energy to get up, to get ready, to act as if all was well. The thought made her want to weep all over again.

But what choice did she have, but to carry on? Matthew was all she had left. She was going to marry him in two days, and perhaps in time she could find her way back to herself, to him. It was with a bitter sort of amusement, as she washed and dried her face, that she thought about how hard she had once tried to save their relationship, and what the cost of keeping him had been.

—

Thursday afternoon found Strike sitting at his desk, smoking and staring at the once-more curling and withering roses on his forearm, bared to the elbow from his sleeves rolled up in the heat. He had sent Alyssa out of the office on some errand, ostensibly as bait on the hook for the Ripper, but in actuality because he could no longer stand the endless stream of chatter, nor the half-pitying, half-scornful looks she’d bestowed on him every time he’d come into her line of sight in the past week. 

He had needed Alyssa—still needed her—to put his risky plan to catch the Shacklewell Ripper into action. But the simple fact of her presence was a constant reminder of what he’d lost—and that was when she wasn’t taking it upon herself to remind him, volubly and forcefully, of what an idiot he’d been, sacking the woman who’d saved her daughters. When she had caught sight of the wound-flowers on his arm, she had shaken her head in wordless disgust, making him wonder if she had seen the injury on Robin’s arm, or if perhaps Shanker had told her about it.

Even her perfume smelled wrong. Heavy and cloying, even through the now-constant fug of cigarette smoke, it had erased the last traces of Robin that had lingered in the office.

Nothing Alyssa could say, though, was any worse than what he had said to himself, once his anger had burned itself out and he was faced with the wreckage he’d made of his life. The memory of Robin’s face, white with misery and wet with tears, was a hovering phantom, summoned afresh every time he caught sight of the wound-flowers on his arm. Their slowly fading colours were an accusation, a condemnation.

He missed her. That much was easy to admit: he missed the hell out of her. He hadn’t thought it possible to miss another person so much. He had sometimes longed for Charlotte, it was true, over the course of their many separations; but the longing had always, no matter how painful or bitter, been tinged with a sense of freedom and relief. Life without Charlotte had been, in many ways, much easier than life with her, so that their partings and reunions were always accompanied by a mass of mixed emotions. 

But now, being without Robin, knowing that he might never see her again… it was like a part of his own self was missing from him, like he was back in that hospital bed staring at the empty space where his leg should have been. Was it because she was his soulmate, he wondered. Was there, in fact, some truth to the fairytales he’d always scoffed at, some mystical connection that ran far deeper than patterns on skin, something that one could not understand until they’d felt it, could not comprehend until they’d lost it? Or was this emptiness simply because it was Robin that he’d lost? Robin, with her easy laugh, and her kind smile, and her keen mind. Robin, who he had come to rely on and to care for. Robin, for whom he felt a great deal more than he’d ever wanted or intended to. 

Did it matter _why_ he was in agony? Did the mystical shit make any difference, really?

He had been able, in the past few days, to look back over their relationship with something resembling equanimity, tallying up all the hints, the signs he had missed. They way she’d always seemed to know when his knee or stump were aching more than usual, the way she had quietly and without being asked taken small, practical measures for his comfort: ice packs, and paracetamol, and re-arranging the rota, and never betraying by a single word or look that it was due to anything but her sharp eyes and caring heart. 

He’d begun to ponder the idea, with a slight sense of discomfort, that perhaps the reason she had always worn long sleeves, and opaque tights, and a full face of makeup, had less to do with her sense of style, as he’d always thought, and more to do with ensuring he would never accidentally discover the truth from an unfortunate stray flower. He had never seen her bare skin, he realized suddenly, apart from her hands; and he was discomfited by how quickly his thoughts romped towards the inappropriate at the thought of her skin, the way the shells of her ears had turned bright pink when she’d blushed. He’d seen it, whenever he had praised her work, or her talent; she had blushed and smiled in a way that lit up her face so that she almost glowed. He had seen the way her fingers slid along the edge of that pink as she tucked her hair back in what he'd realized was her habitual gesture of embarrassment. Why the hell had he been so grudging, so spare with his praise? He should have told her every day what a marvel he found her, how much she’d done for him, how much he stood in quiet awe of her competence, her passion, her strength.

He’d blamed her, in his heart, for not telling him. But he had begun to remember, now, all of the times that he had derided the very idea of soulmates. He had made his views quite clear, hadn’t he; and more than that, he’d taken pains to discourage the kind of intimacy that might have led to any such revelation, had deliberately and carefully constructed a wall between them. How could he blame her for not breaching that wall, when her tact and consideration in every other respect was one of the things he liked most about her? She’d been engaged when they met, in love with someone else. How could she have done any different than what she had done? 

No, he understood her now, as she had always understood him. She’d understood him even in those last, horrible moments, when she’d been able to look through his fury and pain and see the core of him, through all of the lies and justifications he’d believed himself.

Strike stubbed his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray, closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, listening to the sound of traffic from the street below. If he was coming clean with himself, he might as well do a thorough job of it.

He wanted her. He wanted to be with her. He hadn’t wanted her to put that ring back on, and it wasn’t because her fiancé was a tit who didn’t deserve her—although he was, of course—but because he, Strike, had wanted her to be free and unencumbered, had wanted the possibilities that that bare finger represented for himself.

He had fucked it all up. He knew that now. Why, for fuck’s sake, had he not said something on that trip to Barrow, the trip that he looked back on so fondly? Why had he not simply walked the five doors distance between them in that hotel and asked her? Where would they be now, if he had? 

Well. He hadn’t, and here they were. He was alone in his office, and she was on her way to Masham to marry someone else.

And now he turned to the question that had been lurking behind his ruminations, to the decision about what needed to be done. She didn’t feel the same way about him as he did her. She was getting married, two days from now. Was it better to let it be, to let her go? To try and move on, begin to reassemble the pieces of his broken life around the hole that she’d left in it? 

Or was it better to accept any part of her that she was willing to offer? To crawl back to her on his hands and knees, to beg for forgiveness and somehow convince her to give him another chance, to fight for her back as his partner, his friend, and watch from the sidelines as she built a life with another man, a man he knew could never deserve her?

Put like that, it was an easy choice. 

He reached for his phone. 

As the phone rang in his ear, he considered what he would say to her. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, didn’t want to hurt her more than he already had. The tone stopped as she picked up, and his heart was in his throat as he opened his mouth to speak—and she hung up. Without saying a word. He took the phone away from his ear to stare at it uncomprehendingly, her name and “call ended” blinking in red. Had it been some kind of accident? If she had not wanted to speak to him, could she not have simply declined the call? It must have been a mistake, he told himself as he dialed her number again. He listened, with a sense of rising unease, as it rang, and rang, and rang, and finally went to voicemail.

He exhaled shakily at the sound of her voice on the recorded greeting. He felt as if he had not heard her speak for much longer than it had actually been, and the sound of her now was both pleasure and pain. 

“Robin,” he said, “it’s me.” 

Strike paused, unsure of how to continue. He hadn’t anticipated talking into silence like this, hadn’t properly organized his thoughts. 

“I’m sorry,” he said finally, deciding that there was no point beating around it. “I fucked up. You were right about…well, about everything.” 

He took a deep breath. 

“Firing you was a mistake. If you wanted, if you’ll give me a chance… I’d like to make it right. ” He cleared his throat, rubbed one large hand over his unshaven face. “Call me back, yeah? If I don’t hear from you, then I’ll know you want me to just piss off, and I will, I swear. I won’t harass you, I won’t keep calling, I’ll just… call me back, Robin. Please.” 

He knew that he should hang up now, before the words that he might later regret could spill out of him. But the feeling that he hadn’t said enough nagged at him as the silence unspooled in his ear. His plan for tomorrow was reckless, dangerous; if something went wrong, these could be the last words he ever spoke to her.

“What I said…” he started, slowly, then paused. “I didn’t mean it. You’re—” 

_Beep._

The tone of the voicemail cutting him off was sharp in his ear, and he cursed inwardly as he lowered the phone. He had said he wouldn’t call back. It would be absurd to phone again, to leave a voicemail consisting of just one word, the word he’d been unable to say in time.

_Everything._

It was up to her, now. He could wait; he would wait, for as long as it took. But looming large in his mind was the fatal deadline: her walk up the aisle towards Matthew, away from him. Two more days. _There was still time._


	15. shove soft petals past my lips

_Friday, 1st July, 2011_

On the evening before her wedding, Robin insisted, over her mother’s protests, on doing the dinner dishes. She took her time, thoroughly scrubbing each plate in the scalding water, rinsing the bubbles carefully and stacking them to dry, forcing herself to focus on the task to reign in her troublesome thoughts, which would, if left unattended, persist in drifting towards Strike. _Stop_ , she told herself wearily, for what felt like the hundredth time. _It’s over_. She tried to turn her thoughts towards Matthew, more from a sense that she should be thinking of her fiancé, on the night before her wedding, than anything else.

He had stayed to eat dinner with Robin and her family before he headed to the Honeymoon Suite at Swinton Park, where he would be spending the night before the wedding. He had bantered and laughed with Robin’s brothers, had jumped up from his seat to help Linda set the table, had thrown himself with verve into the last minute problems with the seating arrangements and speeches. 

No one had seemed to notice how little Robin had said the entire evening, or how she had picked at her dinner, or the way her smiles were a few seconds too late and didn’t reach her eyes.

In less than a day, they would be husband and wife, and Robin couldn’t ignore the uneasy feeling that she had been caught in an undertow, a dark and powerful current sweeping her towards the altar and a future that seemed as murky as the dirty dishwater in the sink in front of her. To fight against the current was futile; if she struggled, she would drown. Best to relax, to let it carry her where it would.

She could remember so vividly how she’d felt, the night Matthew had proposed to her; the excitement and love with which she’d accepted, the joy that had threatened to burst out of her when he’d slid the ring onto her finger.

And then the next morning, she had been nearly knocked to her death by a bear of a man; and perhaps that Robin, Matthew’s Robin, had died in that moment, and the Robin that Strike’s big, hairy hand had hauled back to life was a different Robin entirely. 

She felt like a stranger, now, the Robin who had beamed down at Matthew next to the statue of Eros, who had thrown herself into his arms once he’d gotten up off the dirty ground, who’d lain contentedly in those arms that night, envisioning the life they would build together.

Robin realized that she was crying again, dully, the tears slipping down her cheeks and splashing into the sink. She hadn’t thought she had any tears left. She wiped them off her cheeks with soapy hands, and focused on scrubbing the burnt bits of lamb off the roasting pan.

No matter how she dawdled, the kitchen was set to rights all too soon. She stood for a long moment at the sink, her arms braced on the counter as she watched the grey wash water and filmy remnants of bubbles swirl down the drain, then took a deep breath, arranged her features into an expression that she hoped would pass muster as nervous-but-happy-bride, and went to join her family. 

She moved a pile of wedding papers from the armchair in the corner so that she could sit in it, pretending that she couldn’t see the empty spot next to Matthew on the sofa. They were talking about the seating charts again; Robin let the conversation flow past her without hearing a word of it. Her eyes settled on Matthew, for want of anything else to look at, and she watched idly as he swept his tawny hair back with one hand. He met her eyes, and paused for a moment mid-stream; and then with a wink at her, he turned back to Linda, leaning forward to look at the chart she had produced.

She had felt nothing. The realization should have produced some sort of guilt, or horror; she had looked into the eyes of the man to whom she would be married, a day from now, and felt absolutely nothing. But all Robin could muster was a sense of leaden resignation and bone-deep exhaustion, and as she was gloomily meditating on this, she slowly realized that the room had gone silent. She looked up; Matthew and Linda were both staring at her, their expressions respectively stony and exasperated.

“What?” Robin asked. Her father had looked up from his book, too. 

“Bad luck,” he said sympathetically.

“The night before the wedding,” Linda tutted, “Honestly!”

“What are you—” Robin started, but Matthew’s resentful silent glare, the way his eyes were roaming over her face, were familiar, and she realized with a shudder of dread what had happened. 

“Excuse me,” she managed, “I’ll just,” she gestured towards the powder room, and her mother turned back to the seating chart. Robin forced herself not to run, aware of Matthew’s eyes following her. She walked to the powder room, closed the door behind her, and looked in the mirror.

Her face was awash with colour. An enormous cluster of tiny blossoms, the pale blue and vivid pink of vervain and valerian mingling together, had bloomed over her nose, spreading across her cheeks. Wincing, Robin leaned in to examine the flowers more closely. As her hair swung forward, she saw a flash of bright red—her ear? She reached up to tuck her hair back; another flash of red. She stared at the palm of her hand, bisected by a neat bright line of blooming red roses. She had seen roses like that before; she had a horrifying, intimate knowledge of the blade that had produced them. 

Fear lanced through her, and she fumbled for the handle of the door. Matthew was standing just outside, in the narrow hallway. She pushed past him, ignoring his protest, running now to the sitting room where she’d set her mobile to charge. All of her misery, her shame, and her anger at Strike had disappeared, been swamped by fear at the sight of those scarlet roses. He was in danger; he was hurt. She had to do something.

“Who are you calling?” Matthew said sharply as she lunged for her phone. She ignored him, thumbing through her contact list until she found Cormoran’s name—and stopped, brought up short as she stared at her mobile’s screen.

“I said, who are you—”

“Matthew,” she said, ice running through her veins. “Why is Cormoran blocked?”

Matthew’s jaw worked, and he folded his arms across his chest. “Why are you phoning him?” he asked, accusing, and behind the bluster and anger Robin saw a flash of guilt.

She stared at him, speechless. When had he—how had he—

“Yesterday. At that service station. You had my phone,” she said, stunned. “But why would—” the realization hit her like a slap to the face. “He called. Cormoran called, didn’t he?”

She did not wait for Matthew to respond; she was already navigating to her call history, which she found empty. He had erased it, and this was all the confirmation she needed. The shock of what he’d done, the enormity of his betrayal, overwhelmed for an instant even her panic as she stared at him.

“Robin, what’s—” her mother began, but Robin cut her off as the rage unfurled in her breast.

“How _dare_ you,” she said, her hand clenched around her mobile. “You know what that job meant to me, you _knew_ —” 

Matthew laughed harshly. “The _job_ ?” he sneered. “It’s not the _job_ you’re calling, is it, it’s _him_ , why don’t you just admit it!”

Robin fired up to argue back, to shout at Matthew, to scream her anger and hurt, but her mother was suddenly beside her, one gentling hand placed on her arm. “Robin, love, what’s happened?”

“Cormoran called, and he deleted my history,” she said flatly, not taking her eyes off Matthew. “He blocked Cormoran’s number, to make sure he couldn’t call again.”

Linda looked dumbfounded, staring between her daughter and future son-in-law. “Surely not—there must be some kind of mistake—”

“So what if I did,” Matthew interrupted, speaking over Linda’s attempt at mediation. Michael and Martin were watching the scene unfold, mouths agape; Matthew ignored all of them, stepping into Robin, glaring down at her. “So what if I stopped you from crawling back to him when he realized he couldn’t get anyone cheaper, when you were nearly killed—”

“You had no right,” Robin shouted, “ _No right_ —”

“WE’RE GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW, I HAVE EVERY BLOODY RIGHT!” Matthew roared back at her, his handsome face twisted and red with anger. “You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know? You act so fucking innocent—”

“Oi,” Martin intervened, jumping off the couch, “Don’t you talk to my sister like—”

“Fine,” Robin said, ignoring Martin, icy in the face of Matthew’s rage. “You want me to admit it? Fine. It’s him. Is that what you wanted, Matthew? _He’s my soulmate._ ”

The room went silent. Robin’s mother had turned to stare at her, eyes wide with shock; Martin was frozen where he stood, and her father gaped from his seat in the ancient recliner. Matthew recovered first.

“You _bitch_ ,” he hissed, advancing on her. Before she could react, he’d grabbed her injured arm. She shrieked in pain; her father surged to his feet as Linda shouted at Matthew and Martin lunged forward to punch him in the face. 

Matthew howled, dropping her arm and cupping both of his hands to his nose as he doubled over. Linda was holding back Martin, who was struggling against her and shouting imprecations, and Michael, face beet-red behind his glasses, was shouting furiously along with him. In the face of the chaos, her arm once more aching, Robin was suffused with a sudden, freeing sense of clarity.

“Quiet,” she said, and when no one in the room heard her, shouted, “BE QUIET!” 

Martin stopped struggling, stepping back and shaking out his fist as he glared at Matthew, who was now standing, pinching his nose against the blood streaming down his face and swearing at Martin. Robin slid the sapphire ring off her finger.

“We’re done,” she said flatly, dropping the ring on the end table beside her with a clink. “The wedding’s off.”

“Robin, you can’t—” Matthew looked panicked now, underneath the blood that covered his chin.

“Yes, I can. I should’ve called it off for good when I found out about Sarah. That was my mistake,” she said. She was still clutching her phone in one hand. On the other, the line of red roses was still fresh and blooming. Her fear for Strike was tugging at her. There was no time—she had to go. 

She pushed past her parents out of the sitting room. Behind her, as she dashed up the stairs, she heard her mother’s raised voice, telling Matthew that he needed to leave, heard his protests and her father and brother resuming shouting. She closed the door of her bedroom on all of it, unblocking Cormoran’s number with shaking fingers. There was no answer the first time she called, or the second, or the third. 

\--

When Linda opened the door to her daughter’s room, it was to find Robin rifling through her drawers and throwing clothing haphazardly into the holdall lying open on the bed. Her phone was lying on the dresser, on speaker, the sound of the ringing on the other end clear. Linda said nothing, but closed the door behind her and waited.

“I’m sorry, mum,” Robin said, her hands pausing. She didn’t look up. “The food, and the flowers, and everything. I’m so sorry.”

“Never mind about all that,” Linda said. “Is it true, what you said? It’s him? Cormoran?”

“Yes,” Robin said. She closed the drawer and turned to the holdall, her toiletry bag in hand. Linda sat heavily on the bed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t tell anybody,” Robin said, finally looking up at her mother, her eyes wet with tears. “I couldn’t.”

Linda pressed her lips together, watching Robin hastily folding and stowing the last of her clothing in the holdall, cramming the toiletry bag down the side. Behind her, hanging from the top of her closet door, was her much-altered wedding dress, its gauzy folds of chiffon and lace hidden by the opaque plastic of the carrying bag

“I’m going back to London,” Robin said, into the silence, answering the question that Linda hadn’t asked. “I have to. He’s—” she choked back the words she’d been about to say, but Linda could read the story in the flowers painted across her face and hand as well as Robin could.

“He fired you,” Linda pointed out, her heart heavy as she watched her daughter.

“I know,” Robin said dully. “But if he called—if there’s a chance that…” she trailed off. “I’m going,” she said flatly, her chin lifting in a stubborn defiance that was deeply familiar to her mother. 

Linda sighed. “Robin, you know…” she hesitated, unsure of how to phrase her worry, her fear, as she watched her only daughter tug the zipper on her holdall closed. Her right arm was still tightly wrapped in its bright white bandage. 

"You have a choice, Robin,” she said finally. “You do. Even with the flowers, you can still choose…"

"I know, Mum,” Robin said, meeting Linda’s eyes with a steely certainty, of the kind she hadn’t felt in a very long time. “I do have a choice. I've made it.” 

"Well, then,” Linda sighed. “I’ll pack you a thermos, it’s a long drive to London. And I suppose I’d better start making phone calls.”

Robin dropped the holdall on the bed and hugged her mother tightly, burying her face in the shoulder of her sweater, which smelled of lavender and home. “Thanks, Mum,” she whispered.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Linda said thickly into Robin’s hair, “we just want you to be happy. You know that, right?”

“I do.” 

\--

The drive to London was indeed a long and lonely one. Robin had accepted a thermos of coffee from Linda with gratitude, but she knew that there was no risk of falling asleep on the road, not with the mounting terror of what she might find at the end of her drive. 

She debated with herself as she drove about what she would do when she reached London, about whether there was anything she could do now. A large part of her wanted to raise the alarm, to send every officer in the Met on a search for Strike. But a smaller, more rational voice had stopped her from dialing 999, arguing that she had absolutely no information about where he was, or about the identity of his attacker, and that any call she made would likely do more harm than good, if Strike was no longer in danger - and she desperately hoped that this was the case. She had been checking her reflection in the mirror every few minutes, making sure that the stain of colour across her nose and cheeks was still there. Every moment that passed with no change was surely a good sign, she thought, although this attempt at reassurance did not ease the sick feeling in her stomach.

With the roads nearly empty, Robin made good time, pushing the old Land Rover almost to the limits of its speed. Still, by the time she reached London it was nearing 3 am. She parked the Land Rover in the Q-Town garage, and walked as quickly as she could, through the familiar, empty streets, to the office. She had no plan, no idea of what she would do if Strike was not at home or the office, no idea of where she might begin to look for him. Robin sped up to a jog.

She still had her keys. Strike had not contacted her to request them back, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to seal them in an envelope and drop them in the mailbox. She let herself in the black door and ran up the metal staircase, the sound of her steps ringing in the silent stairwell.

She paused outside the office door for a moment; it was dark and silent, and a jiggle of the handle confirmed that it was securely locked, so she continued up until she reached Strike’s door, panting.

She didn’t stop to catch her breath, but rapped firmly on the door. Silence greeted her, and after a moment she knocked again, louder, and again, until she was pounding on the door. Finally, she was forced to admit what she’d already known—he wasn’t there. She could feel the emptiness of the building, the echoes of her movements the only noise to disturb the silence and the dark.

She backtracked her steps down the stairs, and stopped in front of the office door. She hovered for a moment in front of it, uncertain; and then, with a deep breath, she unlocked it and stepped through. 

How could a space feel so deeply familiar, yet so strange at the same time? It had only been a couple of weeks since she’d last been here. It felt like much, much longer. With a powerful feeling of helplessness, she walked through to the inner office, scanning for any signs of a struggle, but with no luck. The office looked much as it always had; slightly shabby, but nevertheless tidy, with everything in its place.

She wandered back through to the desk that had been hers, gnawing absently on her thumbnail, at a loss as to what she should do next. The desk was not how she’d left it, she saw as she drew closer; there was a clutter of magazines, chewing gum wrappers and unwashed mugs on the usually clean surface and, when she opened her drawer, she saw her neatly arranged stationary in a disarray and a half-empty packet of Silk Cuts. 

She slammed the drawer shut. That he had replaced her, so soon, was both hurtful and mystifying. Surely, in two weeks, the agency hadn’t gone from zero clients to enough to require a secretary?

She sank down onto the couch, pulling out her phone to call Cormoran again, but without much hope that he would answer. This time, the call went straight to voicemail, and she hung up before the recorded greeting could finish. 

She was exhausted, wrung out. Perhaps if she closed her eyes for just a moment, to sort through her thoughts, she would be able to find a solution. She breathed in deeply and leaned back into the couch. The smell of the office, the lingering traces of Benson and Hedges, soothed something deep inside her, easing the tension that she had been carrying for hours as she drove. Within moments, curled up in the dark and quiet of the empty office, Robin had fallen fast asleep.

\--

It had been several hours since Strike’s brief but vicious fight with the Shacklewell Ripper; in its aftermath, he had been stitched up in hospital and then questioned thoroughly by police. They’d held him for so long that his silenced phone had died, he’d noticed with irritation as he finally stepped out of the police station. Hunting down a taxi on foot had taken even longer, and by the time he’d pulled up in front of the Denmark Street office, a grey dawn was beginning to lighten the sky. Strike was exhausted and in pain, and as he limped up the metal steps past the closed door of the office to his flat, he wanted nothing more than to collapse into his bed and sleep soundly for the next two days. 

However, he knew he wasn’t going to be sleeping today. No, he had more important things to do; a more important place that he had to be.

He’d made the decision impulsively—or perhaps the adrenaline and triumph coursing through his veins as he stared at Laing, bloody and handcuffed on the floor, had made it for him. But his resolve had not weakened in the hours since; in fact, quite the opposite.

What did he have to lose now? Why not make one last effort, hopeless as it might be?

Shanker would be arriving to pick him up before too long, but Strike thought he had time for a shower, at least. He would make time. If he hoped to convince Robin to come back to him, then he would need every edge he could get, and that included washing the smell of blood and disinfectant off his battered body.

\--

Robin woke with a jerk, shooting upright from where she had slumped over on the couch. For a moment, she was disoriented; but then the office came into focus, and her memories flooded back, and at the same time she realized that the sound which had awoken her was coming from the flat above, the rattle of pipes and heavy footsteps clearly audible through the thin plaster and wood. She stared at the ceiling a moment, her thoughts fuzzy and uncomprehending, before she grasped what she was hearing. When she did, the relief hit her with the power of a crashing wave, so that she sagged back into the couch with the weight of it.

Strike was alive. More than alive—he wouldn’t be walking around his flat, showering, if he’d been incapacitated or severely injured. He was okay. 

Robin took a shaky breath before pushing herself up from the couch. She would go upstairs, see him with her own eyes, talk to him, and maybe…

She paused with her hand on the doorknob as the reality of Strike’s presence mere feet above her sunk in. The last time she’d seen him, he had told her they were nothing. He’d made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her, that all they’d been through, their work, their partnership, their friendship—that none of that mattered. 

Could she be sure he would welcome her, if she went upstairs? He could have phoned for any number of reasons, none of which meant that he wanted her back. Perhaps he had simply wanted to arrange for the return of her office keys, she thought suddenly with a guilty start. If she had presumed... if she had overstepped…if she saw him once more, only to have the door slammed in her face, it would be the final blow; she would shatter into pieces all over his doorstep. 

Robin stood, frozen, her hand on the doorknob, as the battle between her reason and her heart waged within her.

\--

Strike cursed as he tried to strafe the stubble off his chin with his left hand; the angle was awkward, his movements both clumsy and hasty. He did not have much time to spare. It had taken him longer than it should have to shower, as he’d had to maneuver carefully in order to avoid getting any of his fresh bandages wet. Shanker would be outside soon, with the car that he’d sworn would not be stolen, and Strike was still damp, half-shaved, and clothed only with the towel wrapped around his waist. 

A knock on the door distracted him; the razor slipped, nicking his chin, and Strike threw it down in frustration, swearing, as he turned away from the mirror. Shanker was early, the bastard. And what was he doing knocking on Strike’s flat door rather than waiting outside, as they’d agreed?

“Give me a bloody minute,” he shouted over another knock as he limped to the door.

He yanked it open, scowling, ready to ask Shanker how the hell he’d gotten in; but the half-formed question died on his lips at the sight in front of him.

Robin. 

Robin was standing there in front of him, mere inches away, her fist hanging in the air, clearly startled in mid-knock, her eyes wide and lips parted. Strike stared, taking in the sight of her, trying to grasp the fact of her presence. 

She was dressed simply, in jeans and a t-shirt. She looked tired, her eyes puffy and red, and her face, bare of makeup, was pale—made even paler in contrast to the riot of colour that spread across her nose, her cheeks, her left ear. Strike gripped the door frame tightly to keep himself upright, his gaze snagged on those spreading blooms.

She had never looked so beautiful.

The seconds ticked by as Strike tried to pull himself together, to find the right words, words that wouldn’t make her dissipate into the air like the fragment of imagination he feared she was.

“Robin,” he croaked, finally, “what’re you—”

“I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, her cheeks flushing a deep pink beneath the flowers. “I didn’t mean to—I’ll just—” she turned away, as if to leave.

“No!” Strike said, more forcefully than he’d intended, and Robin started, whipping back around to stare at him. “No. I mean, don’t go,” he modulated his tone, trying to sound less desperate than he felt. 

“Come in. Please,” he added, stepping back and holding the door open. 

She walked past him, still blushing and with a tight grip on the strap of her handbag. He caught her glance flicker down to his chest, and realized with mortification that he was still wearing only a towel, that droplets of water from the shower were still clinging to his thick mat of chest hair.

When she was safely inside, he closed the door firmly behind her.

“I’ll just go and…” he gestured towards his bedroom and she nodded, looking at the floor. He paused. “Don’t leave. Please.”

Her eyes flickered back up to meet his, and he saw with a hopeful jolt to his heart the tiny smile playing around her lips.

“I won’t,” Robin said. 

Her face was hot, her embarrassment acute; but she couldn’t seem to stop her eyes from lingering on him, drawn against her will to the broad lines of his shoulders and his thickly muscled arms. As he turned, though, she glimpsed a long white dressing on his back, and couldn’t stop a startled gasp from escaping. Strike swung back around.

“What?” he said, clearly alarmed. Robin lowered her hands from where she’d clamped them over her mouth.

“Just… your back,” she said shakily. “I didn’t know. I didn’t… see.”

“Oh,” Strike said, and there was that silence again, the tension drawing out between them that made Robin want to both flee for the street and throw herself into those strong arms.

“It’s alright,” he said finally, grinning a little. She tried to grin back. “Laing dropped his machete on me. No real damage done.”

“Laing—?”

But before Robin could finish her thought, or begin to articulate one of the dozen questions that had just sprung clamoring into her mind, he’d turned back and walked into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. 

_Laing._ The revelation of the Shacklewell Ripper’s identity briefly overwhelmed every other thought in her head, even those concerning the weight of Strike’s eyes on her and the sight of his bare torso, and left her no less flustered and confused.

Robin took a deep, shuddering breath, pushing her questions away, and looked around the tiny flat.

She felt a bit awkward, standing in the middle of the room, and debated for a moment between taking a seat on one of the cheap metal chairs at his tiny formica table, or on the shabby couch pushed against one wall. She chose the chair, finally, and sat, and then a moment later jumped up again to move to the couch, and then shot back up as the bedroom door opened and Strike emerged, clad more casually then she’d ever seen him in sweatpants and a faded t-shirt. He was talking on his mobile; she sank down to the couch again, unable to stop herself listening.

“I said sorry, Shanker, I don’t—” he said into the phone, frowning irritably as he listened to the garbled shouting that Robin could hear coming from the other end from her perch across the room. His eyes flicked over to her, and then away as he lowered his voice, mumbling into the receiver, “Because she’s here, you prat, I don’t need it anymore.”

Robin felt her eyebrows creep up to her forehead. Strike was avoiding her gaze now, had gone into the kitchen and started filling the kettle.

“Well put the bloody car back where you found it then,” he said, angry again. He flicked the kettle, said a terse goodbye into his mobile, and ended the call. He didn’t turn around to face Robin, but stood where he was, staring at the kettle, his hands on the countertop, arms braced, head hanging between his shoulders.

“Were you going somewhere?” Robing hazarded, trying not to give the bubble of hope in her chest room to expand. Strike sighed gustily, then turned to look at her, a sheepish smile on his face.

“Masham.”

“Masham?” she said, startled. “Why were you going to Masham?”

“You must know why,” he said quietly, his dark eyes serious now. Robin stared at him, speechless, and after a moment he looked away, a slight frown creasing his forehead.

“Why are you here?” he asked slowly. “Shouldn’t you be doing… you know, wedding things?” He made a vague gesture with his hand, and Robin repressed a mad urge to giggle, before she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, looking him directly in the eye.

“There’s not going to be a wedding.”

“No?” 

The kettle had finished boiling and clicked off, but Strike ignored it, his eyes fixed on her. 

“No,” she said firmly. “Matthew went into my phone. He blocked your number and deleted the call history. I couldn’t… not after that. It’s over.”

Robin looked down at her hands, tears pricking in her eyes—not because of Matthew, but because of the expression on Strike’s face. She blinked rapidly, getting herself under control.

“I didn’t know you’d called, not until last night,” she explained, her voice wavering just a little.

“Oh.” 

Strike felt weak with relief. This was why she hadn’t called back. It hadn’t been, as he’d feared, that she was done with him. And the second she’d found out, she’d called off her wedding, left the white dress hanging behind her, and driven through the night to get to him. His chest swelled with something that felt like happiness. 

“Hang on,” he said suddenly, as a thought occurred. “Does this mean you didn’t hear the voicemail I left?”

“What voicemail? What did it say?”

Strike hesitated; what should he tell her? The whole of the truth felt dangerous, at this early hour, alone together in his tiny flat. They were both exhausted; he was injured. She’d only just left her fiancé. 

“That I fucked up,” he said simply. “That I was sorry. That I wanted you back. Back to work,” he clarified hastily, before she could get the wrong idea. Well, the right idea, but… Robin’s eyes were glimmering with tears, and the smile that was dawning on her face was making him feel lighter than he had in weeks.

The whole truth would keep. This was enough, for now.

“Was that all?” Robin asked, voice trembling.

_I want you. I need you. I can’t bear to be without you, not for another minute._

“Yeah. Essentially.”

Robin laughed a little as she lifted her hands to wipe at the tears in her eyes.

“Of course. Of course I’ll come back,” she said, then added, “But I want to be a proper partner this time. With a contract and everything.” 

Her attempt at a stern tone was undermined by her beaming smile, but as Strike was prepared to give her anything—up to and including another limb—if it would persuade her to come back to him, it hardly mattered.

“Yeah,” he said, the grin that he could no longer contain splitting his face, making his broken nose throb. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Partners, then?” Robin asked, her eyes twinkling at him as she held out her hand. Strike took it, though the slight pressure made the wound on his palm throb sharply under its bandage.

“Partners,” he affirmed. Her hand was small and warm in his, her fingers soft; he didn’t want to let it go. The memory of a dark and quiet street, the snowflakes kissing her cheeks and eyelashes, rose before him.

Robin felt as though the flat had suddenly grown much smaller, pressing in on her, and she too remembered that night barely half a year ago, when she’d felt the soft press of his lips and the scratch of his stubble on her skin. He was looking down at her with an expression she’d never seen before, something intense and beautiful and terrifying in the depths of his dark eyes. Her heart pounded in her chest, her mouth grew dry.

“Robin—” Strike began, his voice low and rough; but whatever he had been about to say, it was cut off by an enormous yawn that he just managed to hide behind his un-bandaged hand. Robin dropped her hand from his and stepped back.

“I should go,” she said nervously, the skin of her fingers tingling where they’d been pressed against his. “No, really,” she said firmly, as Strike began to protest. “You need sleep, and I’ve got to go sort out… well, everything, I suppose. The money, and the wedding gifts, and all that. Find somewhere to live.” Robin was aware that she was beginning to babble, and pressed her lips together.

“Let me help,” Strike said instantly, as he opened the door for her and she ducked under his long arm. “I'll call Nick and Ilsa. They've got a spare room, you could stay for as long as you needed while you sort everything out." 

"I couldn't—" Robin demurred, but Strike interrupted.

"You could," he said, gentle yet firm. "They like you. You’ll be able to stay there as long as you need, especially once… I mean…” Strike stuttered to a halt. A sudden vision had flashed through his mind, of the look he would see on Ilsa’s face when she opened the door to find himself and Robin on the other side, their connection writ large all over their faces. Robin didn’t seem to notice, though, and after a brief hesitation she smiled shyly up at him.

"Thank you. That would be lovely."

“Right,” Strike said. “Well. I’ll see you…” he paused, unsure, but Robin smiled.

“Soon?” she suggested, and Strike grinned in relief.

“Yeah. Soon,” he replied, and knew that if he had his way, soon would be this very evening, and perhaps the day after that as well, and every one after that, but he’d cross that particular bridge when they came to it.

Robin knew she should be turning, heading down the stairs, leaving Strike to his rest and recuperation; but something held her there in stasis on the landing outside his door, looking up at him, and perhaps he felt the same force, for he hadn’t moved either from where he stood, one elbow propped up on the doorframe.

And then, before she could lose her nerve, Robin stepped forward, and Strike was already reaching for her, so that in a heartbeat they were holding each other tightly, Strike’s arms wrapped around Robin’s waist, her chin resting on his shoulder. Robin’s hands gripped the soft, worn cotton of Strike’s t-shirt, his body warm and solid against hers.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” Robin whispered into his ear, turning her head so that her lips just barely brushed against the skin of his neck.

Strike could only nod wordlessly, inhaling the faint traces of her perfume that clung to her hair . After a long moment, they pulled apart; but Robin paused, her arms resting on his biceps as she looked up his battered and swollen face.

And then she leaned up and kissed him, deliberately and carefully, on his cheek. His face was imperfectly shaved, his stubble rough against her lips; it would take only a slight turn of his head for his lips to capture hers… But Strike’s only movement was a slight flex of his hand where it had fallen on her hip, and it was with a shivering thrill of desire that she felt his breath catch in his chest, and knew suddenly that if he asked her to come back in, to stay with him, she would. 

When Robin pulled away properly, dropping her hands and stepping back, Strike felt himself sway briefly after her with a desperate urge to feel her soft lips again, and the wild thought of begging her to come back in, to stay with him, flashed through his mind. 

But in a moment he had regained control over himself and backed away, pulling his hand off of her hip. She had only just left Matthew; they had only just taken the first tentative steps back to solid ground together. If he did or said the wrong thing, it could shatter the delicate process of repairing their partnership, their friendship.

“Bye, then,” Robin said quietly. Strike nodded, and she turned to go, clattering down the metal stairs, her heart and step light.

Strike closed the door after her, braced his head against the cheap wood, and breathed. 

They hadn’t spoken about it, not properly. They had danced around and alluded to the wound-flowers, feeling their way along a mutual understanding that neither could yet put words to. But they had time.

They had all the time in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to BlueRobinWrites for her lovely beta reading, and thank you to everyone who's been reading, commenting, and waiting patiently to _finally_ get to the " fix-it" part of this fix-it fic!! I hope it was worth the wait!
> 
> Chapter title from “i will never be your expectations of me” by Amanda Lovelace


End file.
